Did Robert Millikan's postulates form the most accepted theory for atomic structure?

1 Answer
Jun 25, 2017

From what I know, Millikan's big discovery was the mass of an electron. Rutherford proposed the atomic structure theory from his famous gold foil experiment, see below.

Explanation:

kcmcgann.tripod.com/goldfoil.jpg

Alpha particles are emitted toward a piece of gold foil, some deflect, as seen in the figure, but most go through. Thomson's model predicted none would deflect, so Rutherford explained this with a much smaller, positively charged nucleus that deflected the positively charged alpha particles.

A better view of his model is in (b); the cloud is a mere probability of where the electrons are, and the nucleus is exponentially smaller than that cloud.