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Greeks
Democritus And Atomic Theory: The Greeks discovered that atoms make up everything and they cannot be split. Democritus, the philosopher, believed that these particles were invisble. A quote by Democritus: "by convention bitter, by convention sweet, but in reality atoms and void". -
Isaac Newton
Theory Of Light: Discovered white light and and the colour spectrum. He argued that the geometric nature of the laws of reflection and refraction could only be explained if light was made of particles, which he referred to as corpuscles, as waves do not tend to travel in straight lines. -
Christiaan Huygens
Discovered the theory of light, and believed that light was made up of waves vibrating up and down perpendicular to the direction of the light travels, and therefore formulated a way of visualising wave propagation. -
John Dalton
Atomic theory: different elements have different mass, confirmed Democritus thesis that matter is made up of atoms, atoms of the same element are identical, atoms cannot be created, destroyed or split, combine with ratios to form different compounds -
Gustav Kirchhoff
Bill Nye video about Kirchhoff Discovered electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of blackbody radiation by heated objects. He announced Kirchoff’s laws and they allowed the calculation of currents, voltages and resistances in electrical circuits that had multiple loops. -
James Maxwell
Discovered the concept of the electromagnetic field theory; made connections between light waves and electromagnets -
Heinrich Hertz
Electromagnetic wavesProved electromagnetic waves existed (based on James Maxwell). Electromagnetic waves are the radiant energy released by certain electromagnetic processes. He also discovered radio waves and electric current without knowing about electrons. -
JJ Thomson
Discovered the electron, hydrogen only has 1 electron, isotopes can be stable (same element, different atomic masses) and he developed plum pudding model. -
Max Planck
Discovered the quantum theory and realized light and electromagnetic waves were emitted in discrete packets of energy -
Neil Bohr
Neil Bohr proposed that energy levels of electrons are discrete and that the electrons revolve in stable orbits around the atomic nucleus but can jump from one energy level (or orbit) to another. He was the founder of the atomic structure and the quantum theory. -
Albert Einstein
"The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything, save our modes of thinking and we thus drifted towards unparelled catastrophe" ~ Albert Einstein. Einstein discovered the general theory of relativity and mass-energy equivalence. Einstein devised a mathematical method of calculating
the size of atoms and molecules and it is E=mc^2 -
Ernest Rutherford
Rutherford was the father of nuclear physics, nuclear structure of the atom, and the Rutherford Model. He demonstrated that the atom has a tiny, heavy nucleus. Rutherford designed an experiment to use the alpha particles emitted by a radioactive element as probes to the unseen world of atomic structure.
