On a Rutherford alpha particle tering ogue with marbles....?

http://www.practicalphysics.org/imageLibrary/jpeg350/1324.jpg This is a picture of the aparatus. It consists of a ramp and 'hill' and is a gravitational ogue of the electrical forces ociated with alpha particle tering. My question is in what ways does this relate to what actually happens to a tered alpha particle in real life, and how to perform this experiment/use the aparatus i.e what parameters can be altered such as speed of ball and the position of the ramp in relation to the hill and how variations in this affect it. In addition if you have any idea how data may be collected in what way it can be interpretted. Any of the above information would be very helpful to me as there dosent seem to be much about and i am very interested in this topic as a whole. Many thanks.