When alpha particles are sent through a thin metal foil only one out of ten thousand rebounded. Rutherford concluded that positively charged particles are concentrated at the centre of the atom. At the time of the experiment, the atom was thought to be analogous to plum pudding (as proposed by J.J. Thomson), with the negative charges (the plums) found throughout a positive sphere (the pudding). If the plum pudding model were correct, the positive "pudding", being more spread out than in the current model of a concentrated nucleus, would not be able to exert such large Coulombic forces, and the alpha particles should only be deflected by small angles as they pass through.