EARLY IDEAS ON ATOMS, ELEMENTS

AND, CHEMISTRY
Atoms and Elements in Ancient Times

Leucippus and Democritus (450BCE)

Democritus- gave the name atomos to the small
pieces of matter
atomos – Greek word for indivisible
Democritus Theories on Atoms that atoms
were specific to the material which they composed
 Democritus Atomic Theories
a. specific to the material which they composed
ex. A stone in its smallest particle has the
same composition with its original size
b. Were in constant motion though different in
size and shape
c. Were in constant motion in space
d. Collided with each other
e. Could rebound or stick together
→Therefore, changes in the matter were a
result of dissociations or combinations of the
atoms as they moved throughout the void.
Aristotle (384-322BCE)
- believed that there were four basic
elements: earth, air, fire and water
→Therefore, matter was continuous, not
atomistic
Robert Boyle (1627- 1691)
Boyle’s Law – “The volume of gas decreases
as the pressure on it increases and vice versa.”
→certain substances decompose
into other substances that cannot be broken
down into down any further
Ex. water → hydrogen and oxygen
H₂O → H₂ † O₂
elements – subs. That that cannot be broken
down
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier’s (18th century)
-experiments accurately measured all
substances involved in the burning process that
“when substances burn, there is no net gain or
loss of weight”.
→ Law of Conservation of Mass” – states
that matter is neither created nor destroyed
during a chemical change and that the total mass
of the starting materials, the reactants.
Lavoisier – established the science of modern chemistry
John Dalton – modernized the Greek ideas of the
element, atom, compound, and molecule
Lois Proust (1754-1826) – found that copper carbonate
is composed of
by mass:
copper - 57.48%
carbon – 5.43%
hydrogen- 0.91%
oxygen – 36.18%
“The Law of Definite Proportions” – a
compound always contains the same elements
in certain definite proportions and in no other
combinations.