3.31 Changing Human Understanding of Matter

By abbey318
  • Period: 450 BCE to 350 BCE

    450-350 B.C.

    450 B.C. - Empedocles, believed that matter was made of four elements, where combining certain element gave you certain items.
    400 B.C. - Greek, Democritus, believed that atoms were conceived to have different sizes, regular geometric sizes.
    350 B.C. - Aristotle believed in Empedocles, believing that matter was made of four elements. Fire, water, earth and air.
  • Period: 500 to

    500-1600

    500-1600 - Alchemists believed that metals would grow like plants, ripening into gold. They would test this theory for centuries.

  • 1650

    1650 - Robert Boyle did not believe in Empedocles theory, believing that a pure substance can not be chemically broken down in to simpler substances.

  • Late 1700s

    1700s - Cavendish burned hydrogen with oxgen, creating water.

  • 1808

    1808 - Daltons atomic model for matter stated that matter are created by non-visible atoms, each element has it's own atom, how compounds are created, and how atoms can not be destroyed nor created.

  • 1831

    1831 - Faraday found that electric current could cause chemic changes in some compounds in solution.

  • 1904

    1904 - Thompson revised to the atomic model further, to explain his theory of very light negative particles, called electrons.

  • 1911

    1911 - Ernest Rutherford designed an experiment to test Thompson's and Nagaoka's models. Aiming for a type of radiation that called alpha particles.