High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In physics, Rutherford scattering is a phenomenon that was explained by Ernest Rutherford in 1911, and led to the development of the Rutherford model (planetary model) of the atom, and eventually to the Bohr model. It is now exploited by the materials analytical technique Rutherford backscattering. Rutherford scattering is also sometimes referred to as Coulomb scattering because it relies only upon static electric (Coulomb) forces, and the minimal distance between particles is set only by this potential. The classical Rutherford scattering of alpha particles against gold nuclei is an example of "elastic scattering" because the energy and velocity of the outgoing scattered particle is the same as that with which it began.