 as we look at the world around us it looks pretty solid we hit a wall with our hand and the hand it stops it does not go through the wall we think of matter so occupying space but there is a lot of empty space in the matter in fact most of the matter is empty space the Rutherford gold foil experiment remains a famous experiment in the history of science between 1908 and 1913 a series of experiments were performed by Haynes Geiger and Ernest Mercedon under the guidance of Ernest Rutherford the experiment was not a single experiment but a series of experiments all the experiments can be summarized using this simulation when Rutherford shot alpha particles the permanently charged helium nuclei on a very thin gold foil unexpected scattering of the particles was observed you can see a radioactive source enclosed in a lead block liberates alpha particles the lead block acts as a shield and sharpness the beam the beam moves through space and strike the gold foil of the few thousands atoms thick a circular zinc sulfide fluorescent screen sounds the foil the particles leaving the foil after the strike make tiny glowing flashes on the screen as we can see most particles remain undeflected they continue to travel a straight path as if the gold foil walls absent most particles which are scattered have less than 90 degree deflection while few particles cross 90 based on these observations Rutherford argued the following points since most particles were not deviated the atoms must mostly be empty a small fraction of the particles were deflected by large angles thus there should be a strong repulsive force in an atom Rutherford proposed the presence of central positively charged nucleus furthermore he estimated the size of the nucleus of the gold atom was very small in comparison with the atom from this conclusion he conceptualized a new atomic theory that we now called Rutherford atomic model it says the atom has a central positively charged nucleus that is surrounded by electrons this model suspended Thomansson model