Goh Xian Fong (12)

2I1
LSS Online Lesson T1W1-3 Task 2
Find out more about one of the following scientists and describe their contributions to our
knowledge about the structure of the atom. In your report, you need to include:

- full name, place of birth, date of birth and death

- a brief description of the type of work the scientists did in his / her lifetime
- their contribution to our understanding of the structure of the atom
- the technology available to the scientist that enabled him/her to make the discovery
- a description of how relevant the scientist's theory is to today's understanding of the
structure of an atom.

Choose from John Dalton, Sir William Ramsay, Marie Curie, J.J. Thompson, Henry Moseley,
Max Planck, Eugen Goldstein, Lord Rutherford, Frederick Soddy, Sir James Chadwick, Niels
Bohr, and Louis de Broglie.

Marie Skłodowska Curie was born Marya Salomee Skłodowska in Warsaw, then Russian
Empire on 7 November 1867. She changed her name to the present Marie Skłodowska Curie
when she was in Paris. She died of aplastic anemia on 4 July 1934.
Marie, along with her husband Pierre Curie, discovered two new elements together,
polonium and radium. They worked four years preparing a very small quantity of radium in
order to prove there really was such an element. They had to work with a ton of
pitchblende uranium ore to accomplish this.
The couple also discovered radiation. They discovered that many elements are radioactive,
which radiate from the atom itself, and hence are dangerous.
Marie Curie had her own laboratory and she used her electrometer to discover that uranium
rays cause the air around a sample to conduct electricity, and hence discovered that the
atoms radiate.
Her most important piece of work was her discovery that radiation comes from the atom
itself, not from the molecules. This helped us understand the radiation of atoms.

References:
http://gardenofpraise.com/ibdcurie.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_curie