Taking a Look at Atomic Structure

he atom or Atomos, which means uncuttable or indivisible, took many years to get to our understanding now. Back then they didn’t have the technology that we have now like microscopes, to figure everything out. Some important people who helped were Greek philosopher Leucippus and his student Democritus. They were the first came up with the idea that matter is made up of of tiny particles. They thought that if you cut something in half a lot times, that you will eventually reach a particle that can't be cut anymore. The next big discovery in the atom didn’t come until hundreds of years later by James Dalton, who stated that atoms of different elements have different masses. Throughout Dalton's life as a chemist he had many theories of the

The history of the atomic theory is thoroughly extensive. It had all started around 400 BCE when few people believed in an atomic theory, that atoms are building blocks. Democratic believed matter was made up of tiny particles. He called them atomos. Democratic is Leucippus’ most infamous pupil Later in history, the law of definite proportions was discovered. Two samples of given compounds are made of the same elements in exactly same proportions by mass regardless of the size or sources of the samples. After this came the law of conservation of mass and law of multiple proportions. Around 1808, John Dalton came up with a different atomic theory. He used Greek concept of the atom and all of the laws previously mentioned to acquire his

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)

Postulated a "Saturnian" model of the atom with flat rings of electrons revolving around a positively charged particle.

The atomic model that was accepted by the scientific community before Rutherford's experiment consisted of a group of positive charge surrounded by electrons to balance the negative charge of the electrons. In Rutherford's experiment, he found that there was a center to atoms, later to be named the nucleus. Rutherford created his own model after stating that Thompson's was incorrect.

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

1913 – Niels Boh proposed his model of the atom with protons in the nucleus and electrons in the shells around it. He also proposed that elements with the same number of electrons in the valency shell meant that they had similar properties.

Ernest Rutherford proposed in 1911 the atom as consisting of a core called nucleus, consisting of heavy protons surrounded by electrons. For the atomic bomb, it is only necessary to consider the nucleus. Around the same time, Neils Bohr and others developed quantum mechanics that deepened our understanding of the atom.

Let us furthermore understand what an atom is. Atoms are natures building material. All substances are composed of matter, and all matter is composed of atoms. Atoms are composed of protons which is the positive charged particles, neutrons is the neutral particles and electrons which it is the negatively charged particles. Protons and neutrons are located in the nucleus. Electrons are found in orbitals surrounding the nucleus. Negatively charged electrons circle the nucleus of the atom, while the nucleus is composed of positively charged protons and neutral neutrons. An atom's atomic number refers to its number of protons, while its atomic mass refers to the number of protons and neutrons. Every different atom has a characteristic number of protons in the nucleus. Atomic number is the number of protons. Atoms with the same atomic number have the same chemical properties and belong to the same element.

John Dalton, also known as the Quaker Atomist, developed the widely known Chemical Atomic Theory. His ideas for this theory can be easily stated. All elements are made up of tiny invisible particles and that these particles, following Heraclitus, would be called “atoms.” All atoms of a given element are chemically identical. Atoms cannot be destroyed or created during chemical reactions, although atoms of different elements may combine to form compounds. The chemical reaction forming a compound does not involve a change in atoms, it involves a change in

Ernest was forced to discard JJ Thomson's Plum Pudding model, he reasoned that the mass of an atom was concentrated in a nucleus. He thus developed the model of the atom which put all the protons in the nucleus and the electrons orbited around the nucleus like planets around the sun. The only difference with today's model is that electrons are now thought to be in electron clouds not in specific orbits.

Next great physicist that would step up to the plate and take over world of Atoms, was The 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, also known as Ernest Rutherford OM, FRS. He was also awarded with a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908, just like Thomson did a couple decades ago, for his investigations of the elements and discovery of the chemistry of radioactive substances. He proposed a model in which the electric charge +Ze in an atom is not distributed over the whole area of the atom but concentrates in a small area. Rutherford’s atomic model is most likely called the Rutherford model or simply Rutherford model of the nuclear atom. It is to be seen to have a black big ball at the center as the nucleus and small red points moving around the nucleus are electrons as seen below.

Despite, funding for atomic-structure research is very expensive. Also, it is fact that atomic-structure cannot see results of funding immediately

Nagaoka “revised” my Plum Pudding model and called it the “Saturnian” model because he thought that opposite charges are impenetrable. He then arranged the electrons to be surrounding the central positive charge. His model consist of a number of electrons of equal mass at the centre of the circle or in his case, the “planet”. He thought that atoms were electrically neutral and in order to maintain it, an atom must contain an equal amount of positive and negative charges. Nagaoka clearly rejected my model and I wasn’t happy about