Reason for deflection of alpha partile in rutherford experiment?

1 Answer
anor277
Jul 12, 2017

Because it bumped into a heavy nucleus.............

Explanation:

See this older [answer.](https://socratic.org/questions/why-did-ruther-ford-s-only-choose-the-gold-foil-for-experiment)

Rutherford used a variety of metal films to perform his experiment. Gold is very malleable amongst metals, which means that it can be beaten out into a very thin sheet. The fact that an heavy α−particle could bounce off the (infinitesimally) THIN gold sheet, right back at the α−particle emitter, was an extremely unexpected result.

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