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Atom and Atomic Theory

The way we know atoms nowadays is completely different as we did two hundred years

ago, it is hard to imagine life before knowing matter was made of tiny, fundamental indivisible

bits, This concept has been floating around on and off for millions of years, antique cultures were

apprehensive of the idea that matter was certainly composed of several elements, but through

those millennia, the question persisted, Democritus was a Greek philosopher who was the first

person to use the term atom He thought that if you take a piece of matter and divide it and

continue to divide it you will eventually come to a point where you could not divide it any more.

This fundamental or basic unit was what Democritus called an atom, he called this, theory of the

universe.

John Dalton was the first to adapt Democritus’ theory into the first modern atomic model.

In 1808, John Dalton used the approach of atoms to explain why elements always react in ratios

of small whole numbers (the law of multiple proportions). Dalton inferred, only if elements are

made of microscopic particles that can combine in an endless variety of ways. From his research,

Dalton developed a theory of the atom. The atomic theory Dalton developed consists of three

ideas: the first one is that all substances are made of atoms. Atoms are the smallest particles of
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matter. They cannot be divided into smaller particles. They also cannot be created or destroyed,

the second one is that all atoms of the same element are alike and have the same mass. Atoms of

different elements are different and have different masses, and finally that atoms join to form

compounds. A given compound always consists of the same kinds of atoms in the same ratio.

Lots of scientifics have talked about the atomic theory before, such as Thompson discovering the

electrons and making his vacuum tubes experiments, then Rutherford finds the nucleus and

makes the gold foils experiment, each of them adding a little bit more to the theory and leading

to what we can call the atomic theory nowadays

It is hard to imagine a life where we don´t know that much about the composition of

things we use daily, but I truly believe we don’t see how much this has impacted in our lives, the

discovering of the atom has lead us to come across with largely variety of common things such

as the periodic table (one of the biggest discovering of the 19th century). Besides that, it is crucial

to understand that atoms and atomic theories aren’t just chemistry, they are everything that

surrounds us, and if we don´t comprehend what is around us, we are failing the primary principle

of the human being.

Works Cited

Bohr, Niels. Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, Volumen 1, four essays, Cambridge,

1961, University of Cambridge Press

Thackray, Arnold W.. " The Origin of Dalton's Chemical Atomic Theory: Daltonian Doubts

Resolved" Isis 57, no. 1 (Spring, 1966): 35-55.

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John C. Powers, "Robert Siegfried: From Elements to Atoms: A History of Chemical

Composition," Isis 96, no. 1 (March 2005): 119-120.