A Brief History of Atomic Theory February 28, 1999 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the beginning of the 1800s John Dalton, an English scientist did work some work on gases, which lead him to the creation of a complex system of symbols for all known elements at the time. He took all the information he had collected, along with the Laws of Conservation of Mass, Definite Composition and Multiple Proportions and updated Aristotle’s theory of matter with the Atomic Theory of Matter, which stated: - All matter is composed of tiny, indivisible particles called atoms. - Atoms of an element have identical properties. - Atoms of different elements have different properties. - Atoms of two or more elements can combine in constant ratios to form new substances. In the late 1800s a man named J. J. Thomson did some experiments, who’s results did not agree with Dalton’s Atomic Theory. Thomson passed electricity though gases, my his experiments, he theorized the existence negatively charged subatomic particles he called electrons. From this theory Thomson created a model of a atom which had the electrons placed evenly inside the atoms. In the early 1900s a Japanese scientist named H. Nagaoka designed an atom model as a large sphere surrounded by a ring of negatively charged electrons. Also, during the early 1900s (1898-1907) a physicist named Ernest Rutherford worked on experiments to test current atom models. His experiments involved shooting rays of alpha particles (small positively charged particles) though very thin pieces of gold foil. Based on Thomson’s model, Rutherford hypothesized that the alpha particles would travel through the gold foil mostly unaffected by the gold. He was right. Most of the particles did pass through, but a small amount of particles were deflected. From this Rutherford hypothesized that the atoms must have a small positively charged core, the...
