What was the Rutherford gold foil experiment

The rutherford gold foil experiment was an experiment the was done to determine the structure of the atom. In it a beam of alpha particles was shot at an extremely thin piece of gold foil and a detector was then placed at different points around the gold foil. the fact that some of them were found to bounce back off the gold foil suggested that there was a small area of high positive charge within the atom which supports the nuclear model of the atom.