The first idea of the makeup of the atom was of a structure common among homes in the 1900's - plum puddings (The great plum pudding glut, 1895). A scientist named J.J. Thomson (The vicar at his christening had a stutter. He also did A.A. Milne and J.R.R Tolkien) discovered the electron - a tiny negatively charged particle in matter. He thought that therefore atoms were shaped like plum puddings - A round 'blob' of something with a positive charge spread through it, with electrons dotted around the outside. In modern terms, think of it as a currant bun, with the electrons as the currants, and a mains wire in the dough for the charge. Everyone went "Wahey" and spent fourteen weeks on a pub crawl to celebrate.
A decade or so later came a chap named Ernest Rutherford. He was allergic to plums and therefore thought that J.J.'s (Him being on first name terms) theory was complete and utter tosh. He hired two goons named Geiger and Dirk (Actually, they were press-ganged into the job). After several daring bank raids to earn money for these experiments (During which Dirk was arrested, so Rutherford replaced him with Marsden), they set up work in a disused laboratory hidden six-hundred and ninety four feet below Big Ben. They set up a big vacuum sphere with a very small sliver of foil inside, an alpha-particle gun (2+ He ions, which try to collide with 2- SHe ions at high speed) and a zinc-sulphide screen which flashed whenever an alpha particle hit it and could rotate around the edge of the sphere. Ernie, being a natural leader, then went off and went to all the scientific press conferences announcing how excited he was at the results he was expecting, getting his picture on the front of 'Hello' magazine, selling his story to the Sun for thousands of pounds and finally campaigning to become Prime Minister (He lost by seventy-four votes), while leaving the two goons to actually collect the results, firing the gun at the foil and seeing if alpha particles hit the screen at the far side, and counting how many hit it per second, which would prove J.J's theory.
Ernie was quite surprised when, on the set of 'Rutherford - Scientist and Sex Symbol', two strange men staggered up to him. They had big, round, moon-like eyes, heads as bald as billiard balls, very small noses and mouths, grey skin and very thin, reedy bodies. On the way they had been spotted by a couple of UFOologists, who instantly came up with all the conspiracy theories that Dark Skies and The X-Files are stealing today. It's them you have to blame. They were, of course, Rutherford's hired goons, and they had finished the work.
"Oh, hello old chaps." said Rutherford "You done then?". Geiger nodded mutely. "Right, well, I'm busy right now, so just mess around with the machine. Hah, try moving the detector to somewhere like 90 degrees to the foil, or even behind it. I'll be back when the movie is done, so I can analyse them."
Geiger grunted resignedly and he and Marsden staggered back to Big Ben.
A few weeks later, Rutherford was lazing around in the lounge in the front of the laboratory, watching the telly, when Geiger and Marsden came back in, making loud grunting noises, and pointing at a sheet of paper. Rutherford took the sheet of paper, and gaped. The detector had detected alpha particles all over the place, even perpendicular to and behind the sheet! His first instinct was to blame the goons for making a mistake, but after they showed him it first hand he had to believe them. Ever reliable, Rutherford quickly made up a theory on the spot. Since the alpha particles, heavy on an atomic scale, had moved, they must have been deflected by something. It couldn't be the electrons, because they were tiny and very light, even on the same atomic scale. Had the particles hit an electron, they would just have barged it away. No, it must have been something else...
Rutherford went back to the lounge, and watched the telly for a few more minutes. Grandstand was on, in a time when Jimmy Hill's chin was only three feet long. As soon as the BBC Sport logo appeared, Rutherford had a brainwave. What if atoms were like that, with a big, dense nucleus and tiny electrons whizzing around it? Well, it made sense, particularly if the nucleus is positive, because then it would deflect the alpha particles in all sorts of different directions, explaining away. The overall charge of the atom, then, including the electrons, would be neutral. Rutherford called this "the Lynam model of atomic structure", but after consultation with his lawyer he changed it to "the Nuclear model of atomic structure" due to the fact that Des didn't want association with anything scientific. Rutherford then went on to mess around with radioactivity, while Geiger and Marsden went on to become actors, appearing in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", and assorted episodes of The Outer Limits.
Later on Niels Bohr took Rutherford's idea of the atom and remodelled it a little bit to become the Bohr model of the atom, thus ensuring himself a place in history by doing very little work, as Rutherford had done before him. He also caused the birth of the phrase "Physics is bohring".
I knew I was going to regret putting this online. *sigh*.