In the Rutherford scattering experiment, a beam of alpha particles was fired at a thin gold film with some of the particles being considerably deflected. Th...

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In the Rutherford scattering experiment, a beam of alpha particles was fired at a thin gold film with some of the particles being considerably deflected. This shows that the gold nucleus is positively charged and is concentrated in a tiny volume. Rutherford's experiment provided evidence that the atom is mostly empty space, with a very small and dense positively charged nucleus at the center. The positive charge of the nucleus causes alpha particles to be deflected when they get close to it. The deflection observed in the experiment was much greater than expected if the positive charge were distributed uniformly throughout the gold foil, indicating that the charge is concentrated in a tiny volume at the center of the atom.