Since Ancient Greece, scientists have proposed the existence of the atom, but

understandings of atomic structures changed rapidly at the turn of the 20th century. This
began with J.J. Thomson's 1904 proposal of the plum pudding model, which allowed for
an atom of positively charged soup with negative electrons floating throughout. Within
less than a decade, scientists Ernest Rutherford and Niels Bohr began to question the
model and created the planetary model instead.

In 1908, Thomson's former student, Rutherford, proposed that the plum pudding
model was incorrect, because each atom contained a central nucleus. To test his thesis,
Rutherford shot alpha rays at a sheet of gold only 1/3000 inch thick. If Thomson's model
were correct, every alpha ray would shoot through the sheet of metal because the ray
would simply pass through the atom's "pudding." However, Rutherford noticed that
some rays shot back. This implied that they bounced off something solid, which
Rutherford thought was a central nucleus. He thus added this component to Thomson's
model, which had no central nucleus. Rutherford's model did not completely reimagine
Thomson's. Like Thomson, Rutherford still believed that atoms contained negatively
charged electrons. Unlike the plum pudding model, where those atoms simply floated in
"soup," Rutherford believed they orbited the central nucleus just as planets orbit the
sun. He proposed that this happened because the central nucleus contained positively
charged protons that forced the negatively charged electrons to orbit around it.

The Rutherford model had one problem: the energy expended by the orbiting
electrons would eventually cause them to collapse into the nucleus, making the atom
unstable. To explain the orbital model, Bohr proposed a quantum theory of electron
rotation. He proposed that electrons "jump" between energy levels without existing in
between those states. When an atom gained or lost energy, the electrons would jump to
higher or lower orbits. The idea was revolutionary and hard to grasp, but later
experiments on hydrogen atoms confirmed Bohr's theory. This completed the planetary
model and replaced the plum pudding model, where electrons did not move in an orbit
with any quantum energy. It explained that the electrons always travel in specific shells
or orbits which are located around the nucleus and these shells have discrete energy
levels. It was developed based on observations of line spectra of the hydrogen atom, it
described the presence of discrete energy levels and also explains the relationship
between orbital size and the energy of the orbital; smallest orbital has the lowest
energy. Therefore,what is lack in Rutherford’s model from Bohr’s is the relationship
between orbital size and the energy of the orbital,no indication of the presence of
discrete energy levels and having no specific shells where electrons located.