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The History Of Atomic Structure

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The History of Atomic Structure

What is the atomic structure you may ask? Well, it’s the law stating the structure of an atom. It is composed of a positively charged nucleus containing a certain amount of protons (positive), neutrons (neutral charge), and electrons (negative). The amount of each subatomic particle (proton, neutron, and electron) all depend on what the element is. Now although this statement may seem fairly simple it was most definitely not. People have been studying the atomic structure for more than 300+ years and are still studying it. So after reading this you may wonder who even made this atomic structure up. After hundreds of years of research there is not any one individual who made the structure up but roughly …show more content…

He stated that this was a mysterious force but never continued his research on it. Then in 460 B.C. there was a philosopher named Democritus. Democritus and his mentor Leocippus posed the question that if he broke bread into multiple pieces how many would breaks would it take until there was no more bread. He then was able to make a few theories being all matter was created of atoms and atoms are solid but not invisible. However, there was a man named Aristotle and many other philosophers who disagreed with Democritus and said matter was composed of four main elements. Earth, fire, air, and water. For example, a liquid was made of water and a stone was made of rock. Therefore, Democritus’s theory “ was rejected by Aristotle, one of the most influential philosophers of Ancient Greece; and the atomic theory was ignored for nearly 2,000 years.”( 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

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