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• The first person to describe unseen ‘atoms’ as the basis for all matter.
• Democritus proposed that if you kept cutting a substance in half forever,
eventually you would end up with an “indivisible” particle.
• He called these particles ‘atoms’, meaning “indivisible” in Greek.
• Democritus thought that atoms were small, hard particles of a single
material that were different in shapes and sizes.
• He thought that atoms were always moving and formed different
materials by combining with each other.
• His predictions were with surprising accuracy to those predicted by the
scientists of the 20th century.
~330 B.C
Aristotle - A Greek philosopher and scientist
• Aristotle was a great draw back to the development of the atomic theory
• Aristotle, the tutor of Alexander the Great, had a great public influence at
that time. He disagreed with Democritus’ idea about the atom. Because of
his great public influence, Democritus’ ideas were ignored for centuries.
• Aristotle deduced that all matter consisted of just four elements: earth,
air, water, and fire. His views were supported by other observations; a
sapling when burning produced fire. Any sap oozing out of wood was
evidence of the element water. The smoke and steam produced gave the
element air, and the remaining ash gave earth. This idea was easy to
believe, so no one questioned it until the 17th century.
1661
Robert Boyle - English Scientist
• Lavoisier was the first to define and distinguish elements and compounds
• He proposed the Combustion Theory and discovered oxygen. Later he
proposed that air is made of two elements- hydrogen and oxygen.
• He was also the first to discover the Law of Conversation of Mass in
chemical reactions. This discovery was the foundation for many other ground-
breaking discoveries.
1803
John Dalton – British Physicist
• Rutherford realized that the ‘plum-pudding’ model did not explain his
observations. He changed the atomic theory and developed a new model
of the atom.
• Rutherford’s model says that most of the atom’s mass is found in a region
in the centre called the nucleus (tiny, extremely dense, positively charged
region in the centre of an atom).
• Rutherford then proposed the existence of the third atomic particle, the
neutron (a particle that is of the same size as a proton, but has no overall
charge).
• Rutherford also calculated that the nucleus was 100,000 times smaller
than the diameter of the atom.
• In Rutherford’s model the atom is mostly empty space, and the electrons
travel in random paths around the nucleus.
• Bohr explained that the electrons can move about the nucleus only in
specific orbits or paths, called energy levels. As long as it stayed within a
specific energy level it will not radiate energy.
o He explained that energy level n=1 is the closest to the nucleus, has
the lowest energy, and is the most stable. Therefore electrons will
tend to fall back to lower energy levels, emitting electromagnetic
radiation in the process. The energy of this radiation is equal to the
energy difference between the higher and lower energy levels.
Bohr model
1932
James Chadwick – British Physicist
Schrödinger Heisenberg
• Proposed that electrons do not travel in definite paths around the nucleus.
• The exact path or position of moving electron cannot be predicted or
determined. Rather, there are regions inside the atom where electrons are
likely to be found.
o Electron clouds – Regions inside an atom where electrons are likely
to be found
Electron-cloud model
???????? Present Model
• The current model scientists nowadays are using is called the ‘Probability
Contour’ model. It is an improved version to the electron cloud model.
• This model forgoes the hope of pinpointing the position of the electron.
Instead regions of electron probability are established. The probability
contours shown would be imagined to contain an electron for a particular
fraction of the time say 90%