History of an Atom
In this day and age, almost every educated middle school student would be able to sketch and label a given diagram of an atom. However, still to this day, not one human has seen what an atom looks like. Our current atomic model, the same one in which you most likely learnt in 5th grade, is really just an educated theory, comprised of years of experimental trials and errors. In fact, the ‘original’ four elements, introduced by ancient philosopher Aristotle: Fire Air, Water, and Earth, were once believed the only elements forming natural matter. Although frowned upon by the ancient Greek society, philosophers Leucippus and Democritus developed their own theoretical understanding of nature. Their theory concluded that every
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His diagram quickly gained the label ‘plum pudding,’ as the electrons similarly resembled the plum slices inside of a pudding.
1909: Ernest Rutherford
The atomic model evolved to a familiar diagram following the results of Rutherford’s popular gold foil experiment. Essentially, a student of Rutherford’s class had been examining the possible pattern of positively charged particles contacting the element of gold. While filming the student’s examination, Rutherford noticed that most of the particles flew straight through, and only a tiny portion either bounced straight back or off of an angle. If Thomson’s model was correct, all of the radium particles should have bounced off of the foil- however, they did not. This led Rutherford to believe that the positive charge of an atom is not equal to the whole of an atom, but rather an even smaller core, located in the middle of the atom, surrounded by the negatively charged electrons. He concluded that the atom is mostly empty space, and that most of the atoms mass came from the small central core- which he declared the nucleus.
1913: Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr, a former student of Rutherford, proposed his own theory: the quantum theory. Furthering Rutherford’s model, Bohr insisted that electrons spin around the nucleus in ‘fixed orbits’, such as planets around the sun. The outer & inner orbit/s have only a certain amount of constant energy,
Democritus of Abdera was a greek philosopher born around 460 BC, a cheerful and blissful man. He was one of the two founding fathers of the Atomic Theory. His thought process on the theory, was that matter was comprised of tiny building particles called atoms. This theory was widely questionable at this time. As people were not very well accustomed with accepting new ideas, and/or new concepts of philosophy and science. This theory was only partially correct, and as scientist of the more modern age began to look deeper into Democritus’s work, they begin to make new theories and hypothesize new ideas about the atom. Which later on, would lead to the development of the atomic theory and the most accurate description of the atom with the work of Niels Bohr.
Then in 1661, Irish chemist Robert Boyle supported the philosophers’ theory of how chemical elements are made up of the simplest matter, backing the theory of how matter makes up all life and is the smallest living thing (Doc. 1). But a bombshell happened in 1803 when John Dalton backed up all three theories by discovering that atoms make up all matter, and chemical compounds are made of atoms (OI).
-According to classical physics, an accelerated charged particle emits radiation. An electron that is orbiting the nucleus should radiate energy and move into a spiral path that ends at the nucleus. Therefore, atoms should collapse from a classical physics description.
What is an atom? An atom is the basic building block of everything. An atom is made of electrons protons and neutrons and the number of protons determines the element. Back in the 1800’s this whole idea was unknown. In the 1800’s steam was starting to power everything. It became important to know how steam works, so you can learn to use it more effectively. It was this idea that drove Dalton to research the atom.
Around 2,500 years ago, Democritus and his partner Leucippus were the first ones to develop the atomic theory in written history. Their theory proposed that every kind of matter was made up of tiny particles, which were named atomos, which means that it is indivisible. This meant that Democritus and Leucippus thought there were little particles of everything, but, the next breakthrough in atomic theory wasn’t made until the early 1800s with a french chemist by the name of Antoine Lavoisier, he was the one who came up with the idea of the law of the conservation of mass, which states that matter stays the same even when it changes shape or form. Then, James Dalton said that all matter was made up of atoms, which were indivisible, and unbreakable.
The second main contributor toward the atomic structure was John Dalton. John Dalton was the one who brought the atomic theory talk back into play after 2000 years from Democritus. Dalton become fond of the atomic structure following his love from meteorology. He claimed that the forces of repulsion that caused pressure only were between the same atoms and the atoms inside a mixture had different weights and complexity. He then decided to calculate the atomic weights by determining the percentages of each composition in a compound. This allowed him to be able to
Rutherford’s understanding of the atom was that the protons were clustered together in the nucleus. The nucleus is then surrounded by empty space occupied by electrons. (Lucas & Wright, 2001)
Around 1803 John Dalton, an English chemist developed the first useful atomic theory of matter. Amedeo Avogadro, the Italian chemist in 1811 published an article drawing the distinction between the atom and the molecule, which now is known as “Avogadro’s
Over the course of the last 5000 years, mankind’s knowledge has been constantly advancing. Chemistry, a branch of science, has experienced a tremendous leap and expansions since ancient Greek civilization. One of the major breakthroughs in the advancement in Chemistry was the creation of the Atomic theory, which laid a foundation for the modern-day Chemistry and future of science. The Atomic theory introduced the idea of atoms, which are defined as the discrete units of matter. There are five key scientists that significantly contributed to the Atomic model over a span of thousands of years. They are: Democritus, John Dalton, J.J. Thompson, Ernest Rutherford, and Niels Bohr.
Bohr is well known for his amazing research on the structure of the atom, he thought that maybe the hydrogen atom was based on the quantum theory that energy can only be transferred in one way, and he also thought that E. rutherford model had some problems, so he fixed
Each different scientist made an impact in some way to the origins of an atom. Lucretius’s work, De Rerum Natura, was the basis for many future scientists. Robert Boyle was a very religious man and people believed that was the reason for him not marrying. Boyle constructed the idea that the air was made up of different particles with each having different functions. Huygens first thought of the idea that waves of light moved in a spherical shape. His wave theory is still used today along with Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory. Isaac Newton is highly popular for his theory of gravity. Bernoulli began with the idea of the kinetic theory of gases in his work, Hydrodynamics. Newton gave the image to a lot of scientists after him of what an
Before Rutherford’s Geiger-Marsden experiment the most popular model of the atom was the “plum pudding model” developed in 1904 by the person who also discovered the electron in 1897, J.J. Thompson. It was the most common model of the atom and stated that electrons (plum) floated around with
Thomson’s discovery of the electron in 1897 and the atomic model, with his findings of the atom containing electrons, each with an individual unit of negative charge. Thomson also found that electrons were very light when compared to the mass of the atoms in which they came from. This is because atoms were known to be electrically neutral, the remainder of the atom had to be positively charged and form most of the weight in the atom. Thomson used his plum pudding model of the atom to present this. How did thomson discover the atom? Thomson discovered the atom through his use of Crookes, or cathode ray, tube in his experiments. He showed that cathode rays were negatively charged, also he looked at positively charged
An Atom is the the basic building block of all matter. Atoms are made up of Particles, called: Protons, neutrons and Electrons. Protons carry a positive charge, the neutron carry 's a neutral charge and the electron carry’s a negative charge. The Atom has two main parts the Nucleus and the Electron Shell. The Nucleus contains the Protons and Neutrons. The electron Shell Contains the The electrons.