Question

Rutherford fired high energy alpha particles at a gold foil. He found that nuclei were very much smaller than the size of an atom because: Question 11 options:

	a large fraction of alpha particles were transmitted without a significant deflection
	the alpha particles split into deuterium nuclei when they encountered the gold nuclei
	the alpha particles could not get closer than 1 Angstrom to the gold nuclei
	some alpha particles were captured by the gold nuclei
	only a small fraction of alpha particles went through the foil without much deflection

Answer 1

Rutherford found that nuclei were very much smaller than the size of on atom because-

A large fraction of the alpha particles were transmitted without any significant deflection.

A very small alpha particles that went close to the nuclei deflected and even smaller amount of alpha particles reflected back which collided with the nuclei. And most of the alpha particels went through the foil without much deflection.

If the nuclei were larger in size then more amount of alpha particles had to reflect back, which didnt happen in the Rutherford Gold Foil experiment. Thus he concluded that the size of the nuclei is very small.