Rutherford’s experiment
In this experiment, Rutherford made use of alpha particles, which are small positively charged particles. He bombarded a very thin sheet of gold foil with these particles. When an alpha particle his the fluorescent screen, a small flash of light (scintillation) was produced. The scintillation could be observed and counted with the help of the movable microscope. All the apparatus were placed in an enclosed vacuum chamber to ensure that: