Atomic Theory Timeline

By sto1290
  • 440

    Democritus

    Democritus
    Democritus was a Greek philosopher and speculative scientist. He believed that all matter is composed of single, indivisable atoms exactly alike qualitatively. He was also the first one to use the term atom. He had the earliest atomic model of which there is written evidence. (He discovered this in 440 B.C)
  • Antoine Lavoisier

    Antoine Lavoisier
    Lavoisier created the Law of Conservtion of Mass which sid that mass is neither created nor destroyed in chemical reactions. The mass of any one element at the beginning of a reaction will equal the mass of that reactant at the end of that reaction.
  • Law of Conservation of Mass

    Law of Conservation of Mass
    The Law of Conservation of Mass was discovered by Antoine Lavoisier. It states that mass is neither created nor destroyed in chemical reaction.
  • John Dalton

    John Dalton
    Dalton believed that atoms of one element differed from those of other elements by their relative weights. He also believed that atoms of two or more different elements combine together to form chemical compounds.
  • Dalton's Atomic Theory

    Dalton's Atomic Theory
    Dalton performed a series of experiments on mixtures of gases to determine what effect properties of the individual gases had on the properties of the mixture as a whole. While trying to explain the results of those experiments, Dalton developed the hypothesis that the sizes of the particles making up different gases must be different.
  • Dmitri Mendeleev

    Dmitri Mendeleev
    By arranging all 63 elements then known by their atomic weights, he managed to organize them into groups possessing similar properties.
  • J.J Thomson

    J.J Thomson
    Thomson discovered the electron. His work put forward a new theory, the atom was made up of small particles, which led him to discover electrons. HE proved his theory by using the cathode ray tube.
  • Cathode Ray Tube

    Cathode Ray Tube
    J.J Thomson did three experiments with the cathode ray tube, and from the experiments he concluded three things: cathode rays are charged particles (which he called corpuscles), these corpuscles are constiuents of the atom, and these corpsucles are the only constituents of the atom.
  • Plum Pudding Atomic Model

    Plum Pudding Atomic Model
    The Plum Pudding Model was proposed before the discovery of the atomic nucleus in order to add the electron to the atomic model. In this model the atom is composed of electrons surrounded by a cloud of positive charge to balance the electrons' negative charges. The electrons were thought to be positioned throughout the atom.
  • Gold Foil Experiment

    Gold Foil Experiment
    Rutherford noticed that alpha particles would not always behave in accordance to the plum pudding model of an atom when fired at a piece of gold foil. These observations stimulated further research that was eventually published in 1911 and has been known ever since as Rutherfords's Gold Foil Experiment.
  • Robert Millikan

    Robert Millikan
    Millikan did an oil-drop experiment to accurately determine both the charge and, by virtue of the charge-to-mass ratio, the mass of the electron. Both numbers allowed Neils Bohr to finally calculate Rydberg's constant and provided the first and most important proof of the new atomic theory.
  • Rutherford Model

    Rutherford Model
    Rutehrford's model suggested taht most of the mass of the atom was contained in the small nucleus, and that the rest of the atom was mostly empty space.Ruther came to this conclusion following his gold foil experiment.
  • Ernest Rutherford

    Ernest Rutherford
    Ernest Rutherford's atomic theory describes the atom as having a central positive nucleus surrounded by negative orbiting electrons. His model suggests that most of the mass of the atom was contained in the small nucleus and the rest of the atom was mostly empty space.
  • Neils Bohr

    Neils Bohr
    Bohr published a theory about the structure of the atom based on the earlier model of Rutherford's. Bohr expanded his theory by proposing that electrons travel in only certain succecively larger orbits. He suggested that outer orbits could hold more electrons than the inner ones, and that these outer orbits determine the atom's chemical properties.
  • Henry Moseley

    Henry Moseley
    Henry Moseley published the results of his measurements of the wavelengths of the X-ray spectral lines of a number of elements which showed that the ordering of the wavelengths of the X-ray emissions of the elements coincided with the ordering of the elements by atomic number.
  • Bohr Planetary Model

    Bohr Planetary Model
    The Bohr Model has an atom consisting of a small, positively-charged nucleus orbited by negatively-charged electrons. The modern model of the atom is based on quantum mechanics. The Bohr Model contains some errors, but it is important because it describes most of the accepted features of the atomic theory without all of the high-level math of the modern version.
  • Quantum Mechanical Model

    Quantum Mechanical Model
    The Quantum Mechanical Model was proposed by Erwin Schrodinger. This model predicts the odds of the location of the electron. This introduced the concept of sub-energy levels.
  • Electron Cloud Model

    Electron Cloud Model
    The electron cloud model is an atom model where electrons are no longer depicted as particles moving around the nucleus in a fixed orbit.
  • Erwin Schrodinger

    Erwin Schrodinger
    Schrodinger used mathematical equations to describe the likelihood of finding an electron in a certain position. Unlike the Bohr model, the quantum mechanical model does not define the exact path of an electron, but rather, predicts the odds of teh location of the electron. This model can be portrayed as a nucleus surrounded by an electron cloud. Where the cloud is more dense, the probability of finding the electron is greatest. This model introduced the concept of sub-energy levels.
  • James Chadwick

    James Chadwick
    James Chadwick proved that the atomic nucleus contained a neutral particle which had been proposed more than a decade ago by Ernest Rutherford.