Sunday, September 12, 2010

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

The atom life so far....

The atom life begins when Democritus, an ancient philosopher, started the atom life. He discovered atoms and found out that atoms are always moving, are indestructible, and what lies between atoms is empty space. Well a long long time after Democritus, Dalton rolled around. Dalton discovered that one atom can combine with another, all atoms of a given element are identical, and that atoms cannot be created, destroyed, or separated into pieces. He was also the creator of the "beach ball" model.  Years after Dalton died.....J.J Thomson was created! Eventually Thomson became a scientist, and he discovered the electron. He explored the cathader rays, and found out that rays could be deflected in a magnetic field. He thought these things were waves, but actually they were what he called "corpuscles", things composed of light negatively charged particles. This later became the ELECTRON. He was also the creator of the "berry muffin" model. After Thomson died, Ernest Rutherford comes along. He was one of Thomson's students, and he proved his teacher WRONG! He did the gold foil experiment, and ended up finding the proton, a positively charged particle, opposite of the electron. He also found out that the majority of the atom's mass is found in the nucleus. Thus, he created the peach pit model. Sadly...people get old, so Rutherford died. :( Luckily, Niels Bohr comes along, and reverses the atom model, which now shows the "orbiting" electrons. This is also known as the "onion" model. After Bohr does what he can, Chadwick steps in. Chadwick discovers the neutron, the negatively charged part of the atom. Because of this discovery, he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1935. He also created the most modern-looking model with a proton, a neutron, and the cloud of electrons. After Chadwick left the earth, Shroedinger comes in. He decided to focus more on how to find the electrons and where they would be. Also while doing that, he made the foundations for the "quantam mechanics", or the most recent atom model. 

Sources: John Dalton Democritus James Chadwick J.J Thomson Ernest Rutherford Niels Bohr other?