This article traces the origin of the nuclear model of the atom back to its roots in the experiments of physicist Rutherford circa 1911. His clever experiments indicated that most of the mass of the atom was concentrated in an extremely dense "kernel" that would be about 10-4 Angstroms in diameter. But prior soap film experiments and ordinary volume measurements (ml/mole) of say, metallic gold, when combined with Avogadro’s number indicated that atoms were associated with an "emptiness" that was on the order of one to five Angstroms in diameter or about 10,000 times the diameter of Rutherford’s kernel. How was this emptiness to be conceptualized? Was it part of the atom, or part of the material aggregate (gold foil in this case)? This paper argues that the thing that has all the mass of the atom, and which accounts for all the properties of the atom, including the atomic number, is simply the atom itself. It is not some sort of "nucleus" of something. Additionally, remarks are offered about the social and educational insights provided by this view.