Question

How did Rutherford’s Gold leaf experiment affect our world?

Answer 1

An atom is composed of nucleus where nucleus is present in center of the atom and in nucleus protons and neutrons are present where protons are positively charged ions and neutrons are neutral and electrons which are negatively charged are revolving around the nucleus.

Complete answer:
Rutherford gold leaf experiment gives us a model of atom and postulates of Rutherford’s model can be defined as follows:
1. Highly charged alpha particles went straight through the foil and remained un-deflected.
2. Some alpha particles were deflected back through large angles.
3. Very small number of alpha particles were deflected backwards by noticing that he considered that positive material was considered to be concentrated in a small and massive region which is known as nucleus and electrons are revolving around the nucleus.
Hence through Rutherford's experiment we get a better and most realistic understanding about matter. The knowledge about experiment also provides conclusive evidence against previous conception of matter as the previous models like Thomson models provided. This experiment also showed that the atom is mostly empty space and the size of the nucleus is very tiny, massive and positively charged and lies at the center of the atom.

Note:
It was possible to obtain the exact size of the nucleus with the help of Rutherford’s experiment. But we can calculate the size of the nucleus by obtaining the closest approach of an alpha particle. Gold foil is used in this experiment because of its highest malleable character.