Question

Explain how the results of Ernest Rutherford’s gold–foil experiment showed that the atom is mostly empty space.

Answer 1

@AkashdeepDeb @aaronq

Answer 2

Only 1 in 20000 alpha particles came back.
That showed him that there had to be something in that mysterious atom that had to be sending it back[Which turned out to be the positive nucleus repelling positive alpha particles].
Do you get it? :)

Answer 3

@AkashdeepDeb not really. can you expand

Answer 4

Yeah yeah sure!
See rutherford was one of those people who would die to find the structure of the atom.
So what he did was launch some ionized helium positively charged particles or alpha particles on a VERY VERY thing Gold sheet.
And he also put a detector on all sides.
After launching the particles he observed that ALMOST ALL of them went straight through the gold. ONLY VERY FEW were deflected. And One out of every 12000 returned back at 180' that means it came straight back.
So by that he concluded that, most of the space in an atom was empty and only on the inside was one positive center [THE NUCLEUS]. He concluded that the centre was positive due to the repulsions or the deflections of the alpha particles.
On a bigger scale if we take the nucleus to be a tennis ball. then the electrons would be more than 5 KILOMETERS away from it.
Getting me now? :)