How the Gold Foil Experiment Changed Our Understanding of the Atom

J.J. Thomson is credited with the discovery of the electron, but his plum pudding model of the atom wasn't as accurate as thought at first. A series of experiments done by Ernest Rutherford, Hans Geiger, and Ernest Marsden in the coming years, most notably, the gold foil experiment, would lead to Rutherford's proposed nucleus-based model of the atom that would take atomic understanding to new levels.