Notes: Development of the ATOM

Ancient Greeks
Thales of Miletus
➢ In 624-546 BCE, was the first to ask the question: what is matter composed of?
➢ He proposed that water was the ultimate substance that constituted matter.
➢ He believed that water can change into any kind of matter.

Empedocles of Agrigentum
➢ 492-432 BCE
➢ Believed that air, water, earth, and fire are the four essential elements that
could be the source of everything.

Leucippus
➢ 5th century BCE
➢ Introduced the first atomic theory by raising questions on whether
or not a substance could be divided continuously.
➢ Concluded that at some point, one would arrive at fragments that
can no longer be divided. Yet, those indivisible fragments would still
maintain the characteristics of the original material.
➢ Was considered the first atomist but is less well-known compared to
Democritus.
Democritus
➢ 460-370 BCE
➢ A student of Leucippus.
➢ Expanded the idea of his teacher.
➢ Was dubbed the father of Atomism.
➢ Proposed the Greek word Atomos, which means indestructible.
➢ Considered atoms to be solid and indestructible. He also thought that the
universe has merely atoms and empty space, which he called the void.

Atomism- refers to the philosophy that states that all matter was produced from atoms.
Aristotle
➢ 384- 322 BC
➢ Rejected the idea of Atomism.
➢ Only those observable things could be proven true. Since the atoms are not
visible to the naked eye, their presence could not be confirmed by
observation.
➢ He believed that water, air, fire, and earth were the fundamental elements
while hot, cold, dry, and wet were the four properties that combined to
produce these fundamental elements.
➢ He further added another fundamental substance called the ether that
constitutes the stars including the Sun.
➢ He also believed that the seeming emptiness of space is filled with ether.
This belief lasted until the Middle ages (AD 500-1450) along with the
falling out of support for atomism.
Epicurus (350-275 BC) and Lucretius (ca. 100-51 BC)
➢ Lucretius wrote a poem entitled “On the nature of things”
wherein he reaffirmed the basic concepts of atomism.
Unfortunately, when he died, so did his writings, only 1 copy of
the poem survived for a century.
➢ In the year the 1400s, the printing press was invented, enabling
the production of several copies of the poem. With this, the new
generation of intellectuals analyzed the poem and reconsidered
the philosophy of atomism.
The Alchemist
➢ With the invention of the printing press, many scholars started to contemplate the idea of atomism. They
hypothesized that water, air, earth, and fire are formed from just a few distinct kinds of atoms. Thus,
diverse possible arrangements of atoms would yield all the possible substances in the universe.
➢ The idea of changing one substance into another substance initiated alchemy. People who practice
alchemy were called alchemists.
➢ They learned the properties of numerous chemical substances. They had shown how certain types of
chemicals react when combined with other substances.
➢ Vastly improving the understanding of basic chemistry.
➢ Most alchemists were mainly skillful with metals, creating cheap imitations of gold and silver. They
believe that base metals can be converted into gold using several chemical reactions.
➢ They were also pursuing the discovery of the Philosopher’s Stone.
Paracelsus
➢ 1493-1541 born Theophrastus von Hohenheim
➢ He founded the school of iatrochemistry (medical chemistry)
➢ This led to the production of metallic medicines to cure illness, encouraging the
alchemist to prepare drugs in the laboratory instead of transmuting metals into gold.
➢ The practice of alchemy started to dwindle in the 17 th century and by the late 18th
century, traditional alchemy was separated from chemistry.
Observations that Led to the Modern Atomic Theory
➢ Atomism was preserved by an Irish alchemist named Robert Boyle.
Robert Boyle
➢ Conducted cautiously controlled experimentations. Robert Boyle
suggested that elements water, fire, earth, and air must not be considered
the true elements because they can still be broken down into simpler
substances such as iron, oxygen, lead, hydrogen, and sulfur through
chemical means.
➢ The experiment he conducted provided the actual evidence that atoms
indeed exist though they are not visible to the naked eye.
➢ He utilized a J-shaped glass tube with a closed bottom and an open-end
top. He added mercury to trap the small amount of air in the short bottom end. As
Boyle added more mercury the volume of the trapped air decreased. On the other hand,
lessening the pressure by removing some amount of mercury increased the volume of
the trapped air.
➢ This experiment leads to the discovery of Boyle’s Law.
French Experiments
➢ In the late 1700s, some experiments by noble French scientists supported the idea of the presence of atoms.
Antoine- Laurent Lavoisier
➢ 1743-1794
➢ In an experiment, he burned small quantities of sulfur and phosphorus. He
measured the mass of the reactants before the experiment and then measured the
mass of the products after the experiment.
➢ Lavoisier was surprised that the mass of the product was greater than the
mass of the reactants.
➢ He then founded the Law of conservation of mass.

Joseph- Louise Proust

➢ 1754-1826
➢ In 1794 he conducted an experiment where he used copper carbonate
(Cu₂CO3) as a reactant in a decomposition reaction. In his experiment, the
copper carbonate was broken down into its components such as copper, carbon,
and oxygen. Proust then continued to analyze different samples of copper
carbonate and discovered that the three elements that constituted it were
consistently found in a constant and identical ratio by mass. He determined that
there were always five parts of copper for every four parts of oxygen and every
one part of carbon; that is, 5:4:1.
➢ He continued to study other compounds and the results were the same. He
eventually came up with the law of definite proportions. It states that the mass ratio of elements in a
compound is always constant.
➢ He also realized that the ratio is always whole numbers. This insight pointed out that atoms could not be
divided further.
Dalton’s Atomic Theory
➢ John Dalton (1766-1844) is a British chemist who wondered how certain amounts of various elements
combine to yield compounds. In his experiments, he computed the relative masses of several elements.
Through the data he collected, the first “periodic table of elements was introduced.

➢ In 1803 he published the first true atomic theory. Below are the essential facts about atoms.
o All matter is made up of atoms- extremely minute, indestructible, and indivisible particles.
o All atoms of a certain element are identical in size, atomic mass, and chemical properties.
o Atoms of an element differ from the atoms of the other elements.
o Atoms can neither be created nor destroyed. This also means that they cannot be divided into
smaller particles.
o In any chemical reaction, atoms of the reactants can be separated, combined, or rearranged, but
never destroyed, to form molecules as a product.
➢ In 1808, Dalton published a polished version of his atomic theory in a book entitled “New System of
Chemical Philosophy”. The same with almost all theories Dalton’s atomic theory had flaws.
o Atoms are indivisible: Dalton's theory proposed that atoms were the smallest possible units of
matter and could not be broken down further. However, this was later shown to be incorrect with
the discovery of subatomic particles such as protons, neutrons, and electrons.
o All atoms of an element are identical: Dalton's theory proposed that all atoms of the same
element were identical in all respects, including mass, size, and chemical properties. However,
this was later shown to be incorrect with the discovery of isotopes, which are atoms of the same
element with different numbers of neutrons.
o Atoms combine in simple whole-number ratios: Dalton's theory proposed that atoms of different
elements combined in simple whole-number ratios to form compounds. While this is generally
true, there are many examples of compounds that do not follow this rule, such as compounds that
contain fractional or variable numbers of atoms.
o Atoms of different elements have different weights and properties: While this is generally true,
there are many examples of elements that have nearly identical atomic weights and chemical
properties. For example, chlorine and bromine have nearly identical atomic weights and behave
similarly in many chemical reactions.
J.J. Thomson’s plum pudding model of the atom
➢ Following the atomic theory that was proposed by John Dalton, the atom should
have no internal structures or smaller constituents. But in 1897, this was proven
wrong.
➢ Joseph John Thomson discovered one type of component of the atom, the
electron. Therefore, he deduced that atoms could still be provided, disproving
Dalton's idea that atoms are indivisible entities.
➢ He conducted an experiment called cathode ray tube that led to the discovery of
the electrons.
➢ Before his experimentation, it was already demonstrated that cathode rays deposit
an electric charge. This electric charge was measured by an electrometer placed at
the opposite end.

➢ Visit the link for a YouTube video about the experiment. Link: https://youtu.be/o1z2S3ME0cI
➢ Link 2: https://youtu.be/2xKZRpAsWL8
➢ After conducting his experimentation, Thomson deduced that the charge of the cathode ray was
negative, in other words, the cathode rays consist of negatively charged particles the electrons. He
described the electron as a negatively charged particle with an almost negligible mass. (Mass of
electron: 9.1093837 × 10-31 kilograms/ 1/1840 amu).
➢ In 1911, Thomson suggested that the atom was like a plum pudding.
Nuclear Model of the Atom
Rutherford’s Planetary Model of the Atom.
➢ Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) critically analyzed Thomson’s plum pudding model. He conducted
experiments that led him to conclude that there are incorrect concepts from Thomson’s model.
➢ According to him if the plum pudding model was true, then the mass of the atom must be spread out or
distributed throughout the atom. So, if a high-velocity alpha particle were to be bombarded at an atom,
there must be an insignificant deflection of the alpha particle.
➢ To test this, he conducted an experiment entitled the gold foil experiment.

➢ He proposed that particles with positive charge can be found in the nucleus and the electrons orbit the
nucleus.
➢ Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908. Unfortunately, Rutherford would have
preferred to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics because he considered physics superior to chemistry. In
his opinion, “All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
Discovery of the Proton
Eugene Goldstein
➢ 1850-1930
➢ Eugen Goldstein was a German physicist. He was an early
investigator of discharge tubes, and the discoverer of anode rays
or canal rays, later identified as positive ions in the gas phase
including the hydrogen ion.
➢ Conducted a similar experiment to J.J. Thomson.
➢ Eugene Goldstein discovered positive particles by using a tube
filled with hydrogen gas (this tube was similar to Thomson's
tube). This resulted in the positive particle having a charge equal
to and opposite to the electron. The positive particle was named
the proton.
➢ Goldstein's discovery of the positively charged particles in the
canal rays provided the first evidence for the existence of protons,
although he did not identify them as such. Rutherford's later work on the scattering of alpha particles
by metal foils provided further evidence for the existence of the proton and helped to refine our
understanding of its properties.
➢ Proton has a mass of = 1.67262192 × 10-27 kilograms/ 1 amu.
Discovery of the Neutron
James Chadwick
➢ The neutron was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932. Chadwick was a British physicist who was
working with Ernest Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England.
➢ Chadwick's discovery of the neutron was based on his study of the radiation emitted by beryllium
when it was bombarded with alpha particles. He observed that in addition to gamma rays (high-
energy photons), the radiation also contained particles that had roughly the same mass as the proton,
but with no electric charge.
➢ Chadwick concluded that these particles must be a new type of particle, which he called "neutrons."
He also found that when the neutrons collided with other atoms, they could cause the atoms to
become radioactive, suggesting that they had a very high penetrating power.
➢ Mass of a neutron= 1.674x10-27 kg/ 1 amu.
Bohr’s Model of the Atom
➢ Niels Bohr (1885-1962) worked in Ernest Rutherford’s laboratory
in 1913.
➢ Rutherford requested Bohr to work on some flaws of his planetary
model.
➢ One of the flaws in Rutherford’s model is that an atom consistent
with his model will have an extremely short lifespan due to
instability.
➢ His efforts resulted in what is known as the Bohr model of the
atom. Which help develop the field of atomic physics.
➢ His atomic model has the following postulates:
o Electrons assume only definite orbits around the
nucleus of an atom.
o Each orbit has an associated energy and a designated
energy level.
o When an electron jumps from a higher energy level to
a lower orbit, light is emitted. When an electron jumps
from a lower to a higher energy level light is
absorbed.
o The emitted/absorbed light has an energy and
frequency that can be calculated from the difference
between the two energy levels.
The concept of atomic numbers
Henry Moseley
➢ Henry Gwyn Jeffrey Moseley was prominent for labeling elements with atomic numbers.
➢ He was influenced by Rutherford to conduct such studies. He then developed X-ray spectroscopy for
studying atomic structures.
➢ In 1913, his findings resulted in the determination of the atomic numbers of various elements.
➢ This resulted in the rearrangement of the periodic table according to increasing atomic numbers.
This resulted in a more accurate arrangement since elements with the same properties fell into the
same group when elements are arranged in an increasing atomic number, rather than increasing
atomic mass, which Dmitri Mendeleev proposed. His work was further supported when isotopes of
the same elements were discovered.