Historical development

of the Atom

Thomson announced his discovery that atoms were

made up of smaller components. This finding
revolutionized the way scientists thought about the
atom and had major ramifications for the field of
physics. Though Thompson referred to them as
"corpuscles," what he found is more commonly
known today as the electron.

John Dalton atom

All matter is composed of extremely small
particles called atoms. Atoms of a given
element are identical in size, mass, and
other properties. Atoms of different
elements differ in size, mass, and other
properties. Atoms cannot be subdivided,
created, or destroyed.

Thomson proposed the plum pudding

model of the atom, which had negatively-
charged electrons embedded within a
positively-charged "soup."

Rutherford's model proposed that the

negatively charged electrons surround
the nucleus of an atom. He also claimed
that the electrons surrounding the
nucleus revolve around it with very high
speed in circular paths. He named these
circular paths as orbits.

Each orbit or shell has a fixed energy and

these circular orbits are known as orbital
shells. The energy levels are represented
by an integer (n=1, 2, 3…) known as the
quantum number. This range of quantum
number starts from nucleus side with n=1
having the lowest energy level.

Erwin Schrodinger. A powerful model of the

atom was developed by Erwin Schrödinger in
1926. Schrödinger combined the equations
for the behavior of waves with the de Broglie
equation to generate a mathematical model
for the distribution of electrons in an atom.