Q: How did Ernest Rutherford discover the nucleus of the atom?

Flexi Says:

• Ernest Rutherford discovered the nucleus of the atom in 1911. He sent a beam of alpha particles toward gold foil and observed the way the particles were deflected by the gold atoms. From his results, he concluded that all of the positive charge and virtually all of the mass of an atom are concentrated in one tiny area, called the nucleus, and the rest of the atom is mostly empty space.
• In Rutherford’s planetary model of the atom, the electrons move through empty space around the tiny positive nucleus like planets orbiting the sun.