What significant experiment did Ernest Rutherford conduct?

Ernest Rutherford is renowned for his groundbreaking experiment in which he shot alpha particles at a thin foil of gold, a procedure that led to significant discoveries about atomic structure. This experiment, conducted in 1909, is famously known as the gold foil experiment.

During this experiment, Rutherford observed that while most alpha particles passed through the foil without any deflection, a small fraction were deflected at large angles, and some even bounced back. This outcome was not consistent with the widely accepted plum pudding model of the atom, which posited that electrons were randomly dispersed in a positive "soup." Instead, Rutherford concluded that atoms must have a dense, positively charged nucleus at their center, which contains most of the atom's mass. This pivotal finding fundamentally transformed the understanding of atomic structure and led to the development of the nuclear model of the atom.

This experiment not only provided insight into the nuclear nature of atoms but also laid the groundwork for future research in nuclear physics and chemistry, marking a significant milestone in the field of atomic theory.