Question

In rutherfords gold foil experiment, most alphas particles passed through the gold foil without deflection and were detected on the screen. What caused the particles to pass through without any deflection?

Answer 1

The vast majority of the volume in an atom consists of the electron orbitals with electrons that have too little mass to deflect the alpha particles. So most pass right through the foil. Only the ones hitting the nucleus are deflected.

Step-by-step explanation:

The whole reason Rutherford and his students conducted this experiment was to test the then current hypothesis that an atom consists of a homogeneous blend of atomic particles, known as the "plum pudding" model. If so, there should be no, or minimal, deflection of particles. That's not what they found. Since particles were found to be deflected, the group concluded that atoms must contain a large object, which became known as the nucleus.