History of Atoms:

400 B.C. EXPLAINED!

It all started with “ATOMISM”; an idea founded by the Greek philosopher
Leucippus which states that everything is made up of a few simple parts. This
idea was founded by Leucippus, but his disciple Democritus developed the
philosophy more fully. He also gave this basic particle the name atom, which
means “uncuttable”.
300’s B.C.
A Greek philosopher named Epicurus incorporated Democritus's ideas about
atoms into his philosophy.
50 B.C.
The Roman philosopher and poet Lucretius presented the fundamental
principles of atomism in his long poem, “On the Nature of Things”.
400’s – 1400’s A.D. (Middle Ages)
 The idea of atoms was largely ignored. This neglect resulted partly from
the fact that atomism had been rejected by Aristotle, an ancient Greek
philosopher whose theories dominated medieval philosophy and science. The
idea that atoms form the basic units of all matter did survive.
1500’s – 1600’s A.D.
The founders of modern science such as Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton of
England and Galileo of Italy believed in atoms. But those scientists could add
little more to the atomic theory than Democritus had described.
1750
The Birth of the Modern Atomic Theory – Rudjer Boscovich, a scientist born
in Croatia suggested that Democritus might have been wrong in believing that
atoms are "uncuttable." Boscovich thought that atoms contain smaller parts,
which in turn contain still smaller parts, and so forth down to the fundamental
building blocks of matter.
Late 1700’s
 Chemistry became an exact science. This is also the time when chemists
discovered that they could combine elements to form compounds only in certain
fixed proportions according to mass.
1803
John Dalton, a British chemist developed an atomic theory to explain the
discovery that elements can only be combined only in certain fixed proportions
according to mass. He proposed that each element consists of a particular kind of
atom and that the varying properties of the elements result from differences in
their atoms. He further suggested that all atoms of a given element are identical
in size, shape, and mass.

1897
Joseph John Thomson, a British physicist, discovered that atoms are
“cuttable”. He made this discovery while studying the rays that travel between
charged metal plates in a vacuum tube. Thomson determined that the rays
consisted of lightweight, negatively charged particles. He had thus discovered
electrons and immediately realized that these electrons must be part of the atom.
Thomson proposed a model of the atom in which negatively charged electrons
were embedded in a positively charged sphere. Despite of his concept being far
from correct, his work encouraged other scientists to investigate the structure of
the atom.
1911
Ernest Rutherford, a physicist from New Zealand, declared that nearly all the
mass of an atom is concentrated in a tiny nucleus. He also stated that the nucleus
is surrounded by electrons traveling at tremendous speeds through the atom's
outer regions.
1913
The arrangement of electrons in atoms was not explained in Rutherford’s
theory. However, a description of the electron structure was proposed by Niels
Bohr, a Danish physicist who had worked with Rutherford. Bohr suggested that
electrons could travel only in a certain set of orbits around the nucleus.
1924
Louis de Broglie, a French physicist, proposed that electrons have some
properties of waves.
1928
A correct description of the arrangement of electrons had been obtained with
the help of other physicists, especially Erwin Schrödinger and Wolfgang Pauli of
Austria, Max Born and Werner Heisenberg of Germany, and Paul Dirac of
England. The nucleus remained largely a mystery although physicists understood
the motions of electrons during this year.
Early 1930’s
Scientists developed particle accelerators capable of producing energies high
enough to study the nucleus. In 1932, a British physicist named James Chadwick
discovered that the nucleus also contains uncharged particles, or neutrons. The
pioneers of nuclear physics did not expect that they would soon see a practical
use for their knowledge.
1938
 The pioneers of nuclear physics did not expect that they would soon see a
practical use for their knowledge. The discovery came a few months before the
start of World War II in 1939, and fission was used in atomic bombs that helped
end the war in 1945.

1964
Researchers had turned up enough clues to indicate what the fundamental
parts of protons, neutrons, and other nuclear particles might be like. Two
California Institute of Technology physicists, the American Murray Gell-Mann
and Russian-born George Zweig, thus proposed a theory describing these parts.
Gell-Mann named the parts “quarks”.
(ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: - Quarks are always combined in groups of two or three.
The original theory required only three kinds of quarks, up (or u), down (or d), and strange
(or s), to make up protons, neutrons, and the other particles. But by 1977, experimenters had
found not only the u, d, and s, but also a charm (or c) and a bottom (or b) quark.)

1995
 Scientists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois,
announced that they had found the top quark. Physicists are almost certain that
there are no more quarks to discover.
PRESENT
Although the basic structure of the atom is well understood, new ways of
using atoms continue to be discovered. Atoms are used to make atomic clocks,
the most accurate clocks in the world. The most advanced of these clocks are so
accurate that they would lose only one second of time over tens of millions of
years. Many scientists are also looking into atoms to improve the power and
speed of computers. Quantum computers make use of the quantum mechanical
properties of atoms or of subatomic particles to quickly perform certain
computations. Some such computations might take classical computers thousands
or millions of years to complete. Quantum effects are difficult to harness for
computing, but researchers continue to create more powerful and stable quantum
computer prototypes.
REFERENCES:
- Saffman, Mark. "Atom." World Book Advanced, World Book, 2020,
https://worldbookonline.com/advanced/article?id=ar036320. Accessed 19
Oct. 2020.

HISTORY OF ATOMS PERFORMANCE TASK BY:

GABRIEL, MARIEN JEWEL G.
GRADE AND SECTION: 12 – SOCRATES