Before rutherford conducted the gold foil experiment, the "plum pudding" model proposed by j. j. thomson offered an explanation for the structure of the atom. rutherford, along with two of his associates hans geiger and ernest marsden, performed an experiment in which an extremely thin metal foil was fired with a beam of alpha particles. the results of the experiment were recorded accurately by another scientist who observed the frequency of alpha particles that passed through the foil unobstructed. use information from the passage to justify whether the characteristics of reliable scientific explanations are present in the development of the atomic theory.