DEMOCRITUS

Democritus is renowned for being a pioneer of mathematics

and geometry. He was among the first Greek philosophers to
observe that a cone or pyramid has one-third the volume of a
cylinder or prism with the same base and height. While none
of his works on the subject survived the Middle Ages, his
mathematical proofs are derived from other works with
contain extensive citations to titles like On Numbers, On
Geometrics, On Tangencies, On Mapping, and On Irrationals.
• Democritus is also known for having spent much of his life
experimenting with and examining plants and minerals. Similar
to his work in mathematics and geometry, citations from
existing works are used to infer the existence of works on the
subject. These include On the Nature of Man, the two-volume
collection On Flesh, On Mind, On the Senses, On Flavors, On
Colors, Causes concerned with Seeds and Plants and Fruits, and
to the three-volume collection Causes concerned with Animals.
• Democritus was a proponent of the spherical Earth
hypothesis. He believed that in the original chaos from
which the universe sprang, the universe was composed
of nothing but tiny atoms that came together to form
larger units (a theory which bears a striking resemblance
to The Big Bang Theory and Nebular Theory). He also
believed in the existence of many worlds, which were
either in state of growth or decay.
• Democritus is credited with illustrating and popularizing
the concept, and for his descriptions of atoms which
survived classical antiquity to influence later
philosophers. Using analogies from our sense
experiences, Democritus gave a picture or an image of
an atom that distinguished them from each other by their
shape, size, and the arrangement of their parts.
• If all matter was composed of tiny, indivisible atoms,
then there must also be a great deal of open space
between them. This reasoning has also gone on to
inform out notions of cosmology and astronomy, where
Einstein’s theory of special relativity was able to do
away with the concept of a “luminiferous aether” in
explaining the behavior of light.
DALTON’S ATOMIC
THEORY
• Dalton developed the law of multiple proportions (first
presented in 1803) by studying and expanding upon the
works of Antoine Lavoisier and Joseph Proust.
• Proust had studied tin oxides and found that their masses were
either 88.1% tin and 11.9% oxygen or 78.7% tin and 21.3%
oxygen (these were tin(II) oxide and tin dioxide respectively).
Dalton noted from these percentages that 100g of tin will
combine either with 13.5g or 27g of oxygen; 13.5 and 27 form
a ratio of 1:2. Dalton found an atomic theory of matter could
elegantly explain this common pattern in chemistry – in the
case of Proust’s tin oxides, one tin atom will combine with
either one or two oxygen atoms.
• Dalton also believed atomic theory could explain why water
absorbed different gases in different proportions: for example,
he found that water absorbed carbon dioxide far better than it
absorbed nitrogen. Dalton hypothesized this was due to the
differences in the mass and complexity of the gases’ respective
particles. Indeed, carbon dioxide molecules (CO2) are heavier
and larger than nitrogen molecules (N2).
• Dalton proposed that each chemical element is composed of
atoms of a single, unique type, and though they cannot be
altered or destroyed by chemical means, they can combine to
form more complex structures (chemical compounds). Since
Dalton reached his conclusions by experimentation and
examination of the results in an empirical fashion, this marked
the first truly scientific theory of the atom.
FREDERICK SODDY
 A British Chemist, won the 1921 Nobel Prize in chemistry for
his contributions to the knowledge of the chemistry of
radioactive substances and his investigations into the origin and
nature of isotopes. In 1913, he was the first to announce the
concept that atoms can be identical chemically and yet have
different atomic weights. These related atoms are called
isotopes, a word coined by Soddy, meaning same or equal place
(Greek, isos topos).
 • Frederick Soddy and Ernest Rutherford proposed the
Disintegration Theory in 1902. This explained that
radioactivity was the result of spontaneous disintegration
of radioactive elements into new elements.They
proposed that there were two radioactive decay series,
one beginning with uranium and ending in lead. The
second began with thorium and ended with lead.
• Soddy’s also discovered that elements could exist with
different numbers of neutrons. These, at the suggestion
of a fellow scientist Margaret Todd, he named isotopes,
from the Greek root for ‘same’. Radioactive isotopes
form the basis of much nuclear medicine today.
JOSEPH JOHN
THOMSON
• The plum pudding model is one of several scientific models of
the atom. First proposed by J. J. Thomson in 1904[1] soon after
the discovery of the electron, but before the discovery of the
atomic nucleus, the model represented an attempt to
consolidate the known properties of atoms at the time: 1)
electrons are negatively-charged particles and 2) atoms are
neutrally-charged.
 • In this model, atoms were known to consist of negatively
charged electrons. Though Thomson called them "corpuscles",
they were more commonly called "electrons" as G. J. Stoney
proposed in 1894.[2] At the time, atoms were known to be
neutrally charged. To account for this, Thomson knew atoms
must also have a source of positive charge to balance the
negative charge of the electrons.
• The plum pudding model usefully guided his student, Ernest
Rutherford, to devise experiments to further explore the
composition of atoms. As well, Thomson's model (along with a
similar Saturnian ring model for atomic electrons put forward
in 1904 by Nagaoka after James Clerk Maxwell's model of
Saturn's rings), were useful predecessors of the more correct
solar-system-like Bohr model of the atom.
ROBERT MILLIKAN
His oil drop experiment helped to quantify the charge of
an electron, which contributed greatly to our
understanding of the structure of the atomic and atomic
theory.
• The oil drop experiment was perhaps the most famous scientific
work of Robert Millikan's career. While at the University of
Chicago, he worked with one of his graduate students, Harvey
Fletcher, to attempt to measure the charge of an electron. Up until
this point in time, around 1913, the world's view of what's going
on inside of an atom was primitive by today's standards. Earlier
experiments by J.J. Thomson had shown that atoms contain some
type of negatively charged particle, and that these particles were
of a mass significantly smaller than that of a hydrogen atom.
 • Exactly what the magnitude of that negative charge was
remained unknown. It also wasn't completely accepted yet that
subatomic particles (particles smaller than an atom, that are
contained within an atom) even existed, so the whole field of
atomic theory was really coming of age in the early part of the
20th century. It was the goal of Millikan and Fletcher to
quantify the charge of an electron, and they more or less
succeeded, as you will see.
• It is called the oil drop experiment because it involved just that
- dropping oil between electrodes (electrically charged plates).
The force of those droplets passing through the electric field
was measured, as was electrical field between the electrodes,
and in measuring and calculating those quantities, they were
then able to determine the charge on a single electron.
ERNEST RUTHERFORD
• Rutherford overturned Thomson's model in 1911 with his well-
known gold foil experiment in which he demonstrated that the
atom has a tiny and heavy nucleus. Rutherford designed an
experiment to use the alpha particles emitted by a radioactive
element as probes to the unseen world of atomic structure. If
Thomson was correct, the beam would go straight through the
gold foil. Most of the beams went through the foil, but a few
were reflected.
• Rutherford presented his own physical model for subatomic
structure, as an interpretation for the unexpected experimental
results. In it, the atom is made up of a central charge (this is the
modern atomic nucleus, though Rutherford did not use the term
"nucleus" in his paper) surrounded by a cloud of (presumably)
orbiting electrons. Rutherford only committed himself to a
small central region of very high positive or negative charge in
the atom.
 • Rutherford was able to calculate that the radius of his gold
central charge would need to be less (how much less could not
be told) than 3.4 × 10−14 meters. This was in a gold atom
known to be 10−10 meters or so in radius—a very surprising
finding, as it implied a strong central charge less than 1/3000th
of the diameter of the atom.
NIELS BOHR
Was a Nobel Prize winning Danish physicist who made
several important contributions to science in which he
discovered the Bohr–van Leeuwen theorem. The major
improvement of Bohr’s model to the Rutherford model
was the quantum physical interpretation of it, which
means sound. Niels Bohr applied his atomic theory to the
periodic table of elements.
• Niels Bohr proposed a theory for the hydrogen atom based on
quantum theory that energy is transferred only in certain well
defined quantities. Electrons should move around the nucleus
but only in prescribed orbits. When jumping from one orbit to
another with lower energy, a light quantum is emitted. Bohr's
theory could explain why atoms emitted light in fixed
wavelengths.
 • Bohr also contributed to the clarification of the problems
encountered in quantum physics, in particular by developing
the concept of complementarity. Hereby he could show how
deeply the changes in the field of physics have affected
fundamental features of our scientific outlook and how the
consequences of this change of attitude reach far beyond the
scope of atomic physics and touch upon all domains of human
knowledge.
HEISENBERG AND
SCHRODINGER
• In Niels Bohr's theory of the atom, electrons absorb and emit
radiation of fixed wavelengths when jumping between fixed
orbits around a nucleus. The theory provided a good description
of the spectrum created by the hydrogen atom, but needed to be
developed to suit more complicated atoms and molecules.
Assuming that matter (e.g., electrons) could be regarded as both
particles and waves, in 1926 Erwin Schrödinger formulated a
wave equation that accurately calculated the energy levels of
electrons in atoms.
 • Erwin Schrödinger theorized that the behavior of electrons
within atoms could be explained by treating them
mathematically as matter waves. This model, which is the basis
of the modern understanding of the atom, is known as the
quantum mechanical or wave mechanical model.the basic form
of Schrödinger's wave equation is as follows:
 • \hat{H}\psi=E\psi H^ ψ=Eψ\psiψ is called a wave
function; \hat{H} H^ is known as the Hamiltonian
operator; and EE is the binding energy of the electron.
Solving Schrödinger's equation yields multiple wave
functions as solutions, each with an allowed value for
EE.
 • In Niels Bohr's theory of the atom, electrons absorb and emit
radiation of fixed wavelengths when jumping between fixed orbits
around a nucleus. The theory provided a good description of the
spectrum created by the hydrogen atom, but needed to be
developed to suit more complicated atoms and molecules. In
1925, Werner Heisenberg formulated a type of quantum
mechanics based on matrices. In 1927 he proposed the
"uncertainty relation", setting limits for how precisely the position
and velocity of a particle can be simultaneously determined.