The Changing Atom

Greek Atomic Theory

The Greek philosophers Democritus and
Leucippus came up with the first theory of the
atom. If you took any substance and broke it up
into smaller and smaller parts that you would
eventually end up with the smallest possible
particle, which they called atomos, meaning
indivisible. They believed that the
characteristics of the substance were defined
by the shape and properties of the atoms. For
example, they believed that iron particles were
solid spheres joined together by hooks.

Daltons Atomic Theory

Dalton made the first major contribution to the
atomic theory since the Greeks. He was able to
give a solid foothold for the theory of atoms. He
knew that when you reacted carbon and oxygen
that you would get two products. By limiting the
amount of carbon reacting to exactly 1g, he
found that one of the products required 1.33g of
oxygen and the other required 2.66g of oxygen,
exactly double. This data suggested that it was
individual particles of each substance reacting
with each other.

J.J. Thompson
During Thompsons time, scientists were studying
cathode rays and discharge tubes. The rays were
originally produced at the cathode, which suggests that
they were negatively charged. However, in 1886, it was
shown that light was also emitted from the positive
electrode, suggesting negative and positive components
of atoms. Thompson was able to show, by taking various
measurements such as heat emitted and how much the
rays were bent by magnets, the exact weight of the
rays, about 1,000 times lighter than hydrogen. He
concluded that the rays were actually made of tiny
particles, which he called corpuscles, now known as
electrons.

He proposed the arrangements of

electrons and the positive
components, unknown at the time,
was a positive matrix with negative
electrons randomly distributed
throughout. This was similar to fruit in
a plum pudding, hence the name
plum pudding model.

Ernest Rutherfords Gold Leaf

Experiment
In 1909, Rutherford along with two of this students
Geiger and Marsden, did an experiment firing alpha
particles at a thin sheet of gold. Using a zinc
sulphide coated screen they were able to detect the
alpha particles. Most went straight through the
gold, but some were deflected at large angles, a
few almost coming straight back. This suggested
that rather than a positive matrix, all the mass and
positive charge was concentrated in a single point
at the centre of the atom- the nucleus, surrounded
by empty space. This disproved the plum pudding
model.

Bohrs Planetary Model

One of the problems with Rutherfords
model was that the electrons would
spiral into the nucleus, making atoms
unstable. Niels Bohr altered this
model, allowing electrons to only
travel round certain paths with
quantised energy levels. This
explained spectral lines in emission
spectra, and the energy of electrons in
different states around the nucleus.

Rutherford Discovers the

Proton
In a similar experiment to his last,
Rutherford fired alpha particles at
nitrogen gas. He found that ions of
hydrogen were produced. He
concluded that these ions, a single
positive charge with no electrons, were
responsible for the positive charge in a
nucleus which he called protons. He
showed that different numbers of
protons defined different elements.

Wave and Particle Behaviour

In 1923, Louis de Broglie suggested that particles could
behave as waves and particles. He came up with a
model of the atom in which electrons travelled as
standing waves around the nucleus. In 1926, Erwin
Schrdinger suggested that electrons had wave
properties in the atom, and so suggested the idea of
atomic orbitals, space in which the electron could be
found. Later working with Heisenberg and his
uncertainty principle, he refined this model to the
electron cloud or quantum model where electrons could
be found in orbitals with a 90 probability, and the
electron cloud is a probability map of where the
electrons are likely to be found.

Chadwick discovers the

Neutron
In 1932, James Chadwick observed a
new type of radiation emitted from
some elements. He showed that this
new type of radiation is made up of
uncharged particles with the same
mass as protons. These became known
as neutrons as they have no charge
and solved an earlier problem with the
nucleus, where the protons were too
close together and repel and be

Modern Developments
It is now known that protons and
neutrons themselves are made up of
even smaller elementary particles
called quarks. Protons are made up of
2 up-quarks and 1 down-quark, and
neutrons are made up of 2 downquarks and 1 up-quark. This further
explains why protons dont repel.