Question

why Rutherford select a alpha particle for his experiment

Answer 1

Rutherford  selected gold foil because he wanted as thin as layer possible ....a particles r doubled charged helium ions..since they have mass of 4u  the fast moving a particles have a considerable amount of energy....he expected that a alpha particles would be deflected by the subatomic particles in the gold atom....since..the a particles were much heavier than the protons he did not expect to see large deflections...in his experiment he saw that most of the fast moving a particles passed straight through the gold foil...some a particles were deflected....n some appeared to rebound....to study the size of the nucleus as bcoz an electron will be deflected by all of the electrons in the gold foil as well as the nucleus whereas an alpha particle plows through the electrons n only deflected by nucleus.

hope it helped u:)

Answer 2

because alpha(He) is inert gas its recated with neutrons not election