Ernest RutherfordRutherford was a student of Thompson's. He decided to test Thompson's theory. He aimed a beam of positively charged particles at a sheet of gold foil and put a special coating behind the foil. After being hit with the particles the coating glowed and Rutherford could see where they went. He also proposed that in the center of the atom there was a tiny positively charged particle called the nucleus. The nucleus is 100,000 times smaller than an atom.
