How Atoms Work

It has been said that during the 20th century, man harnessed the "power of the atom."
We made atomic bombs and generated electricity by nuclear power. We even split
the atom into smaller pieces called subatomic particles.
But what exactly is an atom? What is it made of? What does it look like? The pursuit of
the structure of the atom has married many areas of chemistry and physics in perhaps
one of the greatest contributions of modern science !

In this article, we will follow this fascinating story of how discoveries in various fields
of science resulted in our modern view of the atom. We will look at the consequences of
knowing the atom's structure and how this structure will lead to new technologies

Important Terms

• atom - smallest piece of an element that keeps its chemical properties

• compound - substance that can be broken into elements by chemical reactions
• electron - particle orbiting the nucleus of an atom with a negative charge (mass = 9.10 x 10-28
grams)
• element - substance that cannot be broken down by chemical reactions
• ion - electrically charged atom (i.e., excess positive or negative charge)
• molecule - smallest piece of a compound that keeps its chemical properties (made of two or
more atoms)
• neutron - particle in the nucleus of an atom with no charge (mass = 1.675 x 10-24 grams)
• nucleus - dense, central core of an atom (made of protons and neutrons)
• proton - particle in the nucleus of an atom with a positive charge (mass = 1.673 x 10-24 grams
What is an Atom? The Legacy of Ancient Times Through
the 19th Century
The modern view of an atom has come from many fields of chemistry and physics. The
idea of an atom came from ancient Greek science/philosophy and from the results of
18th and 19th century chemistry:

• concept of the atom

• measurements of atomic mass
• repeating or periodic relationship between the elements

Concept of the Atom

From the ancient Greeks through today, we have pondered what ordinary matter is
made of. To understand the problem, here is a simple demonstration from a book
entitled "The Extraordinary Chemistry of Ordinary Things, 3rd Edition" by Carl H.
Snyder:

1. Take a pile of paper clips (all of the same size and color).
2. Divide the pile into two equal piles.
3. Divide each of the smaller piles into two equal piles.
4. Repeat step 3 until you are down to a pile containing only one paper clip. That
one paper clip still does the job of a paper clip (i.e., hold loose papers together).
5. Now, take a pair of scissors and cut that one paper clip in half. Can half of the
paper clip do the same job as the single paper clip?

If you do the same thing with any element, you will reach an indivisible part that has the
same properties of the element, like the single paper clip. This indivisible part is called
an atom.

The idea of the atom was first devised by Democritus in 530 B.C. In 1808, an English
school teacher and scientist named John Dalton proposed the modern atomic theory.
Modern atomic theory simply states the following:

• Every element is made of atoms - piles of paper clips.

• All atoms of any element are the same - all the paper clips in the pile are the
same size and color.
• Atoms of different elements are different (size, properties) - like different
sizes and colors of paper clips.
• Atoms of different elements can combine to form compounds - you can link
different sizes and colors of paper clips together to make new structures.
• In chemical reactions, atoms are not made, destroyed, or changed - no new
paper clips appear, no paper clips get lost and no paper clips change from one
size/color to another.
• In any compound, the numbers and kinds of atoms remain the same - the
total number and types of paper clips that you start with are the same as when
you finish.

Dalton's atomic theory formed the groundwork of chemistry at that time. Dalton
envisioned atoms as tiny spheres with hooks on them. With these hooks, one atom could
combine with another in definite proportions. But some elements could combine to
make different compounds (e.g., hydrogen + oxygen could make water or hydrogen
peroxide). So, he could not say anything about the numbers of each atom in the
molecules of specific substances. Did water have one oxygen with one hydrogen or one
oxygen with two hydrogens? This point was resolved when chemists figured out how to
weigh atoms.

How Much Do Atoms Weigh?

The ability to weigh atoms came about by an observation from an Italian chemist named
Amadeo Avogadro. Avogadro was working with gases (nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen,
chlorine) and noticed that when temperature and pressure was the same, these gases
combined in definite volume ratios. For example:

• One liter of nitrogen combined with three liters of hydrogen to form ammonia
(NH3)
• One liter of hydrogen combined with one liter of chlorine to make hydrogen
chloride (HCl)

Avogadro said that at the same temperature and pressure, equal volumes of the gases
had the same number of molecules. So, by weighing the volumes of gases, he could
determine the ratios of atomic masses. For example, a liter of oxygen weighed 16 times
more than a liter of hydrogen, so an atom of oxygen must be 16 times the mass of an
atom of hydrogen. Work of this type resulted in a relative mass scale for elements in
which all of the elements related to carbon (chosen as the standard -12). Once the
relative mass scale was made, later experiments were able to relate the mass in grams of
a substance to the number of atoms and an atomic mass unit (amu) was found; 1 amu or
Dalton is equal to 1.66 x 10-24 grams.

At this time, chemists knew the atomic masses of elements and their chemical
properties, and an astonishing phenomenon jumped out at them!

The Properties of Elements Showed a Repeating Pattern

At the time that atomic masses had been discovered, a Russian chemist named Dimitri
Mendeleev was writing a textbook. For his book, he began to organize elements in
terms of their properties by placing the elements and their newly discovered atomic
masses in cards. He arranged the elements by increasing atomic mass and noticed that
elements with similar properties appeared at regular intervals or periods. Mendeleev's
table had two problems:

• There were some gaps in his "periodic table."

• When grouped by properties, most elements had increasing atomic masses, but
some were out of order.

To explain the gaps, Mendeleev said that the gaps were due to undiscovered elements.
In fact, his table successfully predicted the existence of gallium and germanium, which
were discovered later. However, Mendeleev was never able to explain why some of the
elements were out of order or why the elements should show this periodic behavior.
This would have to wait until we knew about the structure of the atom.
In the next section, we will look at how we discovered the inside of the atom!
The Structure of the Atom: Early 20th Century Science
To know the structure of the atom, we must know the following:

• What are the parts of the atom?

• How are these parts arranged?

Near the end of the 19th century, the atom was thought to be nothing more than a tiny
indivisible sphere (Dalton's view). However, a series of discoveries in the fields of
chemistry, electricity and magnetism, radioactivity, and quantum mechanics in the late
19th and early 20th centuries changed all of that. Here is what these fields contributed:

• The parts of the atom:

o chemistry and electromagnetism ---> electron (first subatomic particle)
o radioactivity ---> nucleus
 proton
 neutron
• How the atom is arranged - quantum mechanics puts it all together:
o atomic spectra ---> Bohr model of the atom
o wave-particle duality ---> Quantum model of the atom

Chemistry and Electromagnetism: Discovering the

Electron
In the late 19th century, chemists and physicists were studying the relationship between
electricity and matter. They were placing high voltage electric currents through glass
tubes filled with low-pressure gas (mercury, neon, xenon) much like neon lights.
Electric current was carried from one electrode (cathode) through the gas to the other
electrode (anode) by a beam called cathode rays. In 1897, a British physicist, J. J.
Thomson did a series of experiments with the following results:

• He found that if the tube was placed within an electric or magnetic field, then
the cathode rays could be deflected or moved (this is how the the cathode ray
tube (CRT) on your television works).
• By applying an electric field alone, a magnetic field alone, or both in
combination, Thomson could measure the ratio of the electric charge to the
mass of the cathode rays.
• He found the same charge to mass ratio of cathode rays was seen regardless
of what material was inside the tube or what the cathode was made of.

Thomson concluded the following:

• Cathode rays were made of tiny, negatively charged particles, which he

called electrons.
• The electrons had to come from inside the atoms of the gas or metal electrode.
• Because the charge to mass ratio was the same for any substance, the electrons
were a basic part of all atoms.
• Because the charge to mass ratio of the electron was very high, the electron
must be very small.
Later, an American Physicist named Robert Milikan measured the electrical charge of
an electron. With these two numbers (charge, charge to mass ratio), physicists
calculated the mass of the electron as 9.10 x 10-28 grams. For comparison, a U.S. penny
has a mass of 2.5 grams; so, 2.7 x 1027 or 2.7 billion billion billion electrons would
weigh as much as a penny!

Two other conclusions came from the discovery of the electron:

• Because the electron was negatively charged and atoms are electrically neutral,
there must be a positive charge somewhere in the atom.
• Because electrons are so much smaller than atoms, there must be other, more
massive particles in the atom.

From these results, Thomson proposed a model of the atom that was like a watermelon.
The red part was the positive charge and the seeds were the electrons.

Radioactivity: Discovering the Nucleus, the Proton and the

Neutron
About the same time as Thomson's experiments with cathode rays, physicists such as by
Henri Becquerel, Marie Curie, Pierre Curie, and Ernest Rutherford were studying
radioactivity. Radioactivity was characterized by three types of emitted rays (see How
Radioactivity Works for details):

• Alpha particles - positively charged and massive. Ernest Rutherford showed

that these particles were the nucleus of a helium atom.
• Beta particles - negatively charged and light (later shown to be electrons).
• Gamma rays - neutrally charged and no mass (i.e., energy).

The experiment from radioactivity that contributed most to our knowledge of the
structure of the atom was done by Rutherford and his colleagues. Rutherford bombarded
a thin foil of gold with a beam of alpha particles and looked at the beams on a
fluorescent screen, he noticed the following:

• Most of the particles went straight through the foil and struck the screen.
• Some (0.1 percent) were deflected or scattered in front (at various angles) of the
foil, while others were scattered behind the foil.

Rutherford concluded that the gold atoms were mostly empty space, which allowed
most of the alpha particles through. However, some small region of the atom must
have been dense enough to deflect or scatter the alpha particle. He called this dense
region the nucleus (see The Rutherford Experiment for an excellent Java simulation of
this important experiment!); the nucleus comprised most of the mass of the atom. Later,
when Rutherford bombarded nitrogen with alpha particles, a positively charged particle
that was lighter than the alpha particle was emitted. He called these particles protons
and realized that they were a fundamental particle in the nucleus. Protons have a mass
of 1.673 x 10-24 grams, about 1,835 times larger than an electron!

However, protons could not be the only particle in the nucleus because the number of
protons in any given element (determined by the electrical charge) was less than the
weight of the nucleus. Therefore, a third, neutrally charged particle must exist! It was
James Chadwick, a British physicist and co-worker of Rutherford, who discovered the
third subatomic particle, the neutron. Chadwick bombarded beryllium foil with alpha
particles and noticed a neutral radiation coming out. This neutral radiation could in turn
knock protons out of the nuclei of other substances. Chadwick concluded that this
radiation was a stream of neutrally charged particles with about the same mass as a
proton; the neutron has a mass of 1.675 x 10-24 grams.

Now that the parts of the atom were known, how were
they arranged to make an atom? Rutherford's gold foil
experiment indicated that the nucleus was in the center
of the atom and that the atom was mostly empty space.
So, he envisioned the atom as the positively charged
nucleus in the center with the negatively charged
electrons circling around it much like a planet with
moons. Although he had no evidence that the electrons
circled the nucleus, his model seemed reasonable; Rutherford's view of the atom
however, it presented a problem. As the electrons
moved in a circle, they would lose energy and give off light. The loss of energy would
slow the electrons down. Like any satellite, the slowing electrons would fall into the
nucleus. In fact, it was calculated that a Rutherford atom would last only billionths of a
second before collapsing! Something was missing!

Quantum Mechanics: Putting It All Together

At the same time that discoveries were being made with radioactivity, physicists and
chemists were studying how light interacted with matter. These studies began the field
of quantum mechanics and helped solve the structure of the atom.

Quantum Mechanics Sheds Light on the Atom: Quantum Mechanics

The Bohr Model Branch of physics that deals with the
Physicists and chemists studied the nature of the light motion of particles by their wave
that was given off when electric currents were passed properties at the atomic and
subatomic level.
through tubes containing gaseous elements (hydrogen,
helium, neon) and when elements were heated (e.g., sodium, potassium, calcium, etc.)
in a flame. They passed the light from these sources through a spectrometer (a device
containing a narrow slit and a glass prism).

Photo courtesy NASA

White light passing through a prism.

Photo courtesy NASA

Continuous spectrum of white light.
Now, when you pass sunlight through a prism, you get a continuous spectrum of colors
like a rainbow. However, when light from these various sources was passed through a
prism, they found a dark background with discrete lines.

Photo courtesy NASA

Hydrogen spectrum

Photo courtesy NASA

Helium spectrum

Each element had a unique spectrum and the wavelength of each line within a spectrum
had a specific energy (see How Light Works for details on the relationship between
wavelength and energy).

In 1913, a Danish physicist named Niels Bohr put Rutherford's findings together with
the observed spectra to come up with a new model of the atom in a real leap of intuition.
Bohr suggested that the electrons orbiting an atom could only exist at certain energy
levels (i.e., distances) from the nucleus, not at continuous levels as might be expected
from Rutherford's model. When atoms in the gas tubes absorbed the energy from the
electric current, the electrons became excited and jumped from low energy levels (close
to the nucleus) to high energy levels (farther out from the nucleus). The excited
electrons would fall back to their original levels and emit energy as light. Because there
were specific differences between the energy levels, only specific wavelengths of light
were seen in the spectrum (i.e., lines).

Bohr models of various atoms.

The major advantage of the Bohr model was that it worked. It explained several things:

• Atomic spectra - discussed above

• Periodic behavior of elements - elements with similar properties had similar
atomic spectra.
o Each electron orbit of the same size or energy (shell) could only hold so
many electrons.
 First shell = two electrons
 Second shell = eight electrons
 Third shell and higher = eight electrons
o When one shell was filled, electrons were found at higher levels.
o Chemical properties were based on the number of electrons in the
outermost shell.
 Elements with full outer shells do not react.
 Other elements take or give up electrons to get a full outer shell.

As it turns out, Bohr's model is also useful for explaining the behavior of lasers
although these devices were not invented until the middle of the 20th century.

Bohr's model was the predominant model until new discoveries in quantum mechanics
were made.

How Atoms Work

by Craig C. Freudenrich, Ph.D.
Electrons Can Behave as Waves: The Quantum Model
of the Atom
Although the Bohr model adequately explained how atomic spectra worked, there
were several problems that bothered physicists and chemists:

• Why should electrons be confined to only specified energy levels?

• Why don't electrons give off light all of the time?
o As electrons change direction in their circular orbits (i.e.,
accelerate), they should give off light.
• The Bohr model could explain the spectra of atoms with one electron in the
outer shell very well, but was not very good for those with more than one
electron in the outer shell.
• Why could only two electrons fit in the first shell and why eight electrons in
each shell after that? What was so special about two and eight?

Obviously, the Bohr model was missing something!

In 1924, a French physicist named Louis de Broglie suggested that, like light,
electrons could act as both particles and waves (see De Broglie Phase Wave
Animation for details). De Broglie's hypothesis was soon confirmed in experiments
that showed electron beams could be diffracted or bent as they passed through a slit
much like light could. So, the waves produced by an electron confined in its orbit
about the nucleus sets up a standing wave of specific wavelength, energy and
frequency (i.e., Bohr's energy levels) much like a guitar string sets up a standing
wave when plucked.

Another question quickly followed de Broglie's idea. If an electron traveled as a

wave, could you locate the precise position of the electron within the wave? A
German physicist, Werner Heisenberg, answered no in what he called the
uncertainty principle:

• To view an electron in its orbit, you must shine a wavelength of light on it

that is smaller than the electron's wavelength.
• This small wavelength of light has a high energy.
• The electron will absorb that energy.
• The absorbed energy will change the electron's position.

We can never know both the momentum and position of an electron in an atom.
Therefore, Heisenberg said that we shouldn't view electrons as moving in well-
defined orbits about the nucleus!

With de Broglie's hypothesis and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in mind, an

Austrian physicist named Erwin Schrodinger derived a set of equations or wave
functions in 1926 for electrons. According to Schrodinger, electrons confined in
their orbits would set up standing waves and you could describe only the
probability of where an electron could be. The distributions of these probabilities
formed regions of space about the nucleus were called orbitals. Orbitals could be
described as electron density clouds (see Atomic & Molecular Orbitals for a look
at various orbitals). The densest area of the cloud is where you have the greatest
probability of finding the electron and the least dense area is where you have the
lowest probability of finding the electron.

The wave function of each electron can be described as a set of three quantum
numbers:

• Principal number (n) - describes the energy level.

• Altazimuth number (l) - how fast the electron moves in its orbit (angular
momentum); like how fast a CD spins (rpm). This is related to the shape of
the orbital.
Can We See Atoms?
Atoms are so small that we cannot see them with our eyes (i.e., microscopic). To give
you a feel for some sizes, these are approximate diameters of various atoms and
particles:

• atom = 1 x 10-10 meters

• nucleus = 1 x 10-15 to 1 x 10 -14 meters
• neutron or proton = 1 x 10-15 meters
• electron - not known exactly, but thought to be on the order of 1 x 10-18 meters

You cannot see an atom with a light microscope. However, in 1981, a type of
microscope called a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) was developed. The STM
consists of the following:

• A very small, sharp tip that conducts electricity (probe)

• A rapid piezoelectric scanning device to which the tip is mounted
• Electronic components to supply current to the tip, control the scanner and
accept the signals from the motion sensor
• Computer to control the system and do data analysis (data collection, processing,
display)

The STM works like this:

• A current is supplied to the tip (probe) while the scanner rapidly moves the tip
across the surface of a conducting sample.
• When the tip encounters an atom, the flow of electrons between the atom and the
tip changes.
• The computer registers the change in current with the x,y-position of the atom.
• The scanner continues to position the tip over each x,y-point on the sample
surface, registering a current for each point.
• The computer collects the data and plots a map of current over the surface that
corresponds to a map of the atomic positions.

The process is much like an old phonograph where the needle is the tip and the grooves
in the vinyl record are the atoms. The STM tip moves over the atomic contour of the
surface, using tunneling current as a sensitive detector of atomic position.
 Photo courtesy National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
STM image (7 nm x 7 nm) of a single zigzag chain of cesium atoms
(red) on a gallium-arsenside surface (blue)
.

The STM and new variations of this microscope allow us to see atoms. In addition, the
STM can be used to manipulate atoms as shown here:

Important Terms

• atom - smallest piece of

an element that keeps its
chemical properties
• compound - substance
that can be broken into
elements by chemical
reactions
• electron - particle
orbiting the nucleus of an
atom with a negative
charge (mass = 9.10 x 10- Photo courtesy NIST
28 Photo source: IBM's Almaden Research Labs
grams)
Atoms can be positioned on a surface using the STM tip, creating a
• element - substancecustom
that pattern on the surface.
cannot be broken down
by chemical reactions
• ion - electrically charged Atoms can be moved and molded to make various
atom (i.e., excess devices such as molecular motors (see How
positive or negative Nanotechnology Will Work for details).
charge)
• molecule - smallest piece
of a compound that keeps
In summary, science in the 20th century has
its chemical properties revealed the structure of the atom. Scientists are
(made of two or more now conducting experiments to reveal details of
atoms) the structure of the nucleus and the forces that
• neutron - particle in the hold it together.
nucleus of an atom with
no charge (mass = 1.675
x 10-24 grams)
• nucleus - dense, central
core of an atom (made of
protons and neutrons)

• proton - particle in the

nucleus of an atom with a
positive charge (mass =
1.673 x 10-24 grams)