As the alpha particles hit the gold foil, most of the alpha particles or about 99% passed through the gold foil while those who did not pass through were deflected by small angles and some were rebounded off the gold foil. This experiment was made by Ernest Rutherford and is known as the Gold Foil experiment. It paved the way for Rutherford to propose his model of an atom. The results helped Rutherford to conclude that the nucleus a a particular atom has a small diameter as compared to the whole atoms and that most of the mass of an atom is contributed by the nucleus since it is the portion that is highly concentrated with particles.
