Atom with electrons

History of the Atom

  • 460

    Democritus discovered the atom or Greek 'a-tomos'

    Democritus discovered the atom or Greek 'a-tomos'
    In the 5th cent. B.C. the Greek philosophers Democritus and Leucippus proposed that matter was made up of tiny, indivisible particles they called atom, or in Greek "a-tomos".
  • Jonn Doltons' Atomic Theory

    Jonn Doltons' Atomic Theory
    1) Chemical elements are made of atoms.
    2) The atoms of an element are identical in their masses
    3) Atoms of different elements have different masses
    4) Atoms only combine in small, whole number ratios such as 1:1, 1:2, 2:3 and so on.
    5) Atoms can be neither created nor destroyed
  • Joseph John Thomsons' Atomic Theory

    Joseph John Thomsons' Atomic Theory
    J.J. Thomson discovered that the atom was not solid, but made of many different smaller pieces.
  • Ernest Rutherfords' AtomicTheory

    Ernest Rutherfords' AtomicTheory
    Ernest discoverd that part of the atom was contained within the nucleus and most of the atom was indeed empty space.
  • Erwin Schrodinger

    Erwin Schrodinger
    Electrons are not particles, they are actually waves.
  • Niels Bohrs' ATomic Theory

    Niels Bohrs' ATomic Theory
    The negitivly charged electron orbits the positivly charged nucleus.
  • James Chadwick

    James Chadwick
    Discovered the neutron.
  • Werner Heinsberg

    Werner Heinsberg
    Heinsberg worked out that particles had a lot more energy over short distances than expected. He realized that a particle can borrow energy as long as it is paid back in a short time.