In the early 1900s many scientists thought that an atom consisted of a positive substance with negative charges scattered throughout the substance. Then Ernest Rutherford completed an experiment that changed the concept of an atom. His discovery led to the understanding that an atom consists mostly of empty space with —
Rutherford's gold foil experiment showed that the atom is mostly empty space with a tiny, dense, positively-charged nucleus. Based on these results, Rutherford proposed the nuclear model of the atom.
