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In the gold foil experiment, a thin sheet of gold was bombarded with alpha particles. Almost all the alpha particles passed straight through the foil. Only a few alpha particles were deflected from their original paths.


State one conclusion about atomic structure based on the observation that almost all alpha particles passed straight through the foil.

Explain, in terms of charged particles, why some of the alpha particles were deflected.

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In the gold foil experiment, when the thin sheet of gold foil was bombarded with alpha particles, some of the particles did not deflect or deflected by a very negligible margin.This happened because the the particles passed through the portion of the atom that contained the electrons. The elctrons outside the nucleus did not deflect the alpha particles. When the alpha particles hit the nucleus of the atom, it got heavily deflected. This experiment went on to prove that the nucleus of an atom is the heaviest part of an atom. This was the reason the few alpha particles that hit the small nucleus got deflected.

Answer;

- The conclusion from the experiment was that Atoms are mostly empty space.

The reason why some particles were deflected is because;

-Alpha particles are positive and are repelled by the nucleus that is also positive.

-Both protons and alpha particles are positively charged so they repel each other.

-Protons and alpha particles have the same charge.

Explanation;

-Alpha particles are positively charged particles that are made up of 2 protons, 2 neutrons and zero electrons. Due to the fact that protons have a +1 charge and neutrons hold no charge, this would give the particle a +2 charge over all.

-Rutherford found that the particles path would be shifted or deflected when passing through the foil. This is due to the fact that like charges repel each other.

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