![]() Dalton's particular contribution, which distinguished his work from what had been done before, was his method for actually determining atomic weight. Not all of these ideas were new the Greeks had already introduced the idea that elements were composed of atoms and that atoms of different elements had different physical properties. Dalton's theory of atoms rested on four basic ideas: chemical elements were composed of atoms the atoms of an element were identical in weight the atoms of different elements had different weights and atoms combined only in small whole-number ratios, such as 1:1, 1:2, 2:1, 2:3, to form compounds. Modern atomic theory is generally said to begin with John Dalton, an English chemist and meteorologist who in 1808 published a book on the atmosphere and the behavior of gases that was entitled A New System of Chemical Philosophy. However, the Greeks' conception of the atom survived, both in Aristotle's works (his arguments against) and in another classical work by the Roman author Lucretius, De rerum natura (“On the Nature of Things”), which was rediscovered in Europe at the start of the Renaissance. During the Middle Ages in Europe, Roman Catholic theologians were heavily influenced by Aristotle's ideas, and so atomic philosophy was largely dismissed for centuries. While the idea of the atom was supported by some later Greek philosophers, it was fiercely attacked by others, including Aristotle, who argued against the existence of such particles. Color, taste, and other intangible qualities were also thought to be composed of atoms. (The word atom comes from the Greek word atomos, which means “indivisible.”) These thinkers held that, in addition to being too small to be seen, unchangeable, and indestructible, atoms were also completely solid, with no internal structure, and came in an infinite variety of shapes and sizes, which accounted for the different kinds of matter. The idea that all matter is made up of tiny, indivisible particles, or atoms, is believed to have originated with the Greek philosopher Leucippus of Miletus and his student Democritus of Abdera in the 5th century B.C. It wasn't until the very end of the 19th century that technology became advanced enough to allow scientists a glimpse of the atom's constituent parts: the electron, nucleus, proton, and neutron. However, prior to the scientific revolution and the development of the scientific method starting in the 16th century, ideas about the atom were mainly speculative. A theory of the structure and behavior of atoms has taken more than two millenia to evolve, from the abstract musings of ancient Greek philosophers to the high-tech experiments of modern scientists.
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