A detector that would flash when hit by an alpha particle. The Unexpected Result
While most did pass through, Rutherford was shocked to find that:
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In 1911, Ernest Rutherford and his team (Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden) conducted the "Gold Foil" experiment, which Backstage Science describes as essentially the .
Chosen because gold is incredibly malleable and can be beaten into a sheet only about 1,000 atoms thick.
To look inside the atom, Rutherford needed to fire something at it. He used: