Corpuscles to Chemical Atomic Theory

(The Development of Atomic Theory)

ROMMEL C. DESUYO
Physical Science
Around 1789, a French man named Antoine Lavoisier used closed vessels
and precise weight measurements in many experiments to achieve the
following:
• He disproved the principle of phlogiston, where heated metals were
thought to lose a substance of negative weight. Metals, which gain weight
when heated in open air, actually react with oxygen air, causing it to form a
calx (metal oxide).
• He showed that air is not an element because it could be separated into
several components. By looking at the air from reacting metals and calces,
he found different “types” of air, one of which caused burning to happen.
Lavoisier called it oxygen.
• He showed that water is not an element, because it was made of two
substances. Oxygen was found to produce water when burned in the
presence of “flammable air” (a part of air that would be later called
John Dalton (1766-1844), to further develop the concept of the atom. His
Chemical Atomic Theory merged the concepts of the atom and element,
and formally established the two in the practice of chemistry.

• Gases, and all chemically inseparable elements, are made of atoms.

• The atoms of an element are identical in their masses.
• Atoms of different elements have different masses.
• Atoms combine in small, whole number ratios.
3 Fundamental Laws:
• Antoine Lavoisier’s Law of Conservation of Mass
• Joseph Proust’s Law of Definite Proportions
• John Dalton’s Law of Multiple Proportions
The atoms and elements as a result of Dalton’s Chemical Atomic Theory:
• that elements were made of the same atoms and had properties unique to the
element, while chemical compounds were made of different combined or compounded
atoms, and exhibited different sets of properties.
• that one could compute the weights of elements (and their atoms) by looking at
comparable amounts of the compounds they formed.
• that one could compute atomic weights compared to a reference. Dalton set the
atomic weight of hydrogen to 1 as this reference. For this reason, the unit for atomic
weight was called the dalton for some time (it is now called the AMU or atomic mass
unit).
Other scientists who made headway in the concept of the element thanks to Dalton’s theory.
• Joseph Gay-Lussac determined that oxygen gas was made of 2 atoms of oxygen and took the
form of a molecule instead of an atom. This offered the possibility that an element wasn’t
necessarily made up of one atom, thus distinguishing the atom from the molecule.
• Amedeo Avogadro (the man who conceptualized the mole) determined that equivalent
volumes of two gases under similar conditions contained equal numbers of particles, and that
differences in their masses was a result of a difference in their molecular mass. Thus, he figured
out a reliable way of weighing atoms and molecules. This was something Dalton lacked in his
theory.
• Later on, Dmitri Mendeleev published a periodic table of elements that ordered elements
according to their atomic weights. He noted patterns in their properties that enabled him to
predict the discovery of other elements. His table became the basis of the modern Periodic
Table.
• Many other scientists in the 19th century discovered more elements, thanks to Dalton’s
theory, Mendeleev’s table, and the advent of improved analytical and decomposition techniques.
From Lavoisier’s 33 elements, the century ended with 8