What did Rutherford’s gold foil experiment demonstrate?
1. Dalton was correct in claiming that atoms are hard, structureless spheres.
2. Electrons must have quantized energy levels.
3. Lead could be transformed into gold.
4. The positive charge in an atom must reside in a dense core much smaller than the atom.
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the answer is '4' - The positive charge in an atom must reside in a dense core much smaller than the atom.
When Soddy/Marsden bombarded thin gold foil with alpha particles (a heavy, positively charged particle), they found that most of them passed straight through the foil, a few had their paths slightly deflected, and about one in 8000 bounced straight back! Rutherford said "When they told me what they had found, I was floored. It was as if we had fired a five inch mortar round at a tissue and had it bounce back to hit us in the face!" The only thing that could have 'turned around' the alpha particle was to have taken a 'head-on' approach to an extremely dense, positively charged center. Rather than being spread out over the entire atom, all of the positive charge must be located in an extremely small central core. For the hydrogen atom, that core accounted for only 1/10,000th of the atom's volume.