John Dalton FRS (6 September 1766 – 27 July 1844) was an

English chemist, meteorologist and physicist. He is best known for his pioneering work in the
development of modern atomic theory, and his research into colour blindness (sometimes referred to as
Daltonism, in his honour).

John Dalton was born into a Quaker family at Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. The
son of a weaver, he joined his older brother Jonathan at age 15 in running a Quaker school in
nearby Kendal. Around 1790 Dalton seems to have considered taking up law or medicine, but his projects
were not met with encouragement from his relatives – Dissenters were barred from attending or teaching
at English universities – and he remained at Kendal until, in the spring of 1793, he moved to Manchester.
Mainly through John Gough, a blind philosopher and polymath to whose informal instruction he owed
much of his scientific knowledge, Dalton was appointed teacher of mathematics and natural philosophy at
the"New College" in Manchester, a dissenting academy. He remained in that position until 1800, when the
college's worsening financial situation led him to resign his post and begin a new career in Manchester as
a private tutor for mathematics and natural philosophy.

Dalton's early life was highly influenced by a prominent Eaglesfield Quaker named Elihu Robinson,[1] a
competent meteorologist and instrument maker, who got him interested in problems of mathematics
and meteorology. During his years in Kendal, Dalton contributed solutions of problems and questions on
various subjects to the Gentlemen's and Ladies' Diaries, and in 1787 he began to keep
a meteorological diary in which, during the succeeding 57 years, he entered more than 200,000
observations.[2] He also rediscovered George Hadley's theory of atmospheric circulation (now known as
the Hadley cell) around this time.[3] Dalton's first publication was Meteorological Observations and
Essays (1793), which contained the seeds of several of his later discoveries. However, in spite of the
originality of his treatment, little attention was paid to them by other scholars. A second work by
Dalton, Elements of English Grammar, was published in 1801.

Colour blindness

This image shows a number 44 or 49, but someone who is deuteranopicmay not be able to see it.

In 1794, shortly after his arrival in Manchester, Dalton was elected a member of the Manchester Literary
and Philosophical Society, the "Lit & Phil", and a few weeks later he communicated his first paper on
"Extraordinary facts relating to the vision of colours", in which he postulated that shortage in colour
perception was caused by discoloration of the liquid medium of the eyeball. In fact, a shortage of colour
perception in some people had not even been formally described or officially noticed until Dalton wrote
about his own. Since both he and his brother were colour blind, he recognized that this condition must
be hereditary.[4]

Although Dalton's theory lost credence in his own lifetime, the thorough and methodical nature of his
research into his own visual problem was so broadly recognized that Daltonism became a common term
for colour blindness.[5] Examination of his preserved eyeball in 1995 demonstrated that Dalton actually
had a less common kind of colour blindness, deuteroanopia, in which medium wavelength sensitive
cones are missing (rather than functioning with a mutated form of their pigment, as in the most common
type of colour blindness, deuteroanomaly).[4] Besides the blue and purple of the spectrumhe was able to
recognize only one colour, yellow, or, as he says in his paper,

that part of the image which others call red appears to me little more than a shade or defect of light. After
that the orange, yellow and green seem one colour which descends pretty uniformly from an intense to a
rare yellow, making what I should call different shades of yellow

This paper was followed by many others on diverse topics on rain and dew and the origin of springs, on
heat, the colour of the sky, steam, the auxiliary verbs and participles of the English language and
the reflection and refraction of light.

Measuring Mountains in the Lake District

Dalton regularly holidayed in the Lake District where his study of meteorology involved a lot of climbing
the fells: until the advent of aeroplanes and weather balloons, the only way to make measurements of
temperature, humidity, etc. at altitude was to climb a mountain. The altitude achieved was estimated
using a barometer. This meant that, until the Ordnance Survey started publishing their maps for the Lake
District in the 1860s, Dalton was one of the few sources of such information. [6] Dalton was often
accompanied in the fells by Jonathan Otley, who became both assistant and friend. Otley was one of the
few other authorities on the heights of the various mountains in the Lake District at the time. [7]

Atomic theory

External video
 Profiles in Chemistry:How John

Dalton's meteorological studies led to the

discovery of atoms, Chemical Heritage

Foundation

In 1800, Dalton became a secretary of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, and in the
following year he orally presented an important series of papers, entitled "Experimental Essays" on the
constitution of mixed gases; on the pressure of steam and other vapours at different temperatures, both in
a vacuum and in air; on evaporation; and on the thermal expansion of gases. These four essays were
published in the Memoirs of the Lit & Phil in 1802.

The second of these essays opens with the striking remark,

There can scarcely be a doubt entertained respecting the reducibility of all elastic fluids of whatever kind,
into liquids; and we ought not to despair of effecting it in low temperatures and by strong pressures
exerted upon the unmixed gases further.

After describing experiments to ascertain the pressure of steam at various points between 0 and 100 °C
(32 and 212 °F), Dalton concluded from observations on the vapour pressure of six different liquids, that
the variation of vapour pressure for all liquids is equivalent, for the same variation of temperature,
reckoning from vapour of any given pressure.

In the fourth essay he remarks,[8]

I see no sufficient reason why we may not conclude that all elastic fluids under the same pressure expand
equally by heat and that for any given expansion of mercury, the corresponding expansion of air is
proportionally something less, the higher the temperature. It seems, therefore, that general laws
respecting the absolute quantity and the nature of heat are more likely to be derived from elastic fluids
than from other substances.

Gas laws

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

Jacques Alexandre César Charles, 1820

He thus enunciated Gay-Lussac's law or J.A.C. Charles's law, published in 1802 by Joseph Louis Gay-
Lussac. In the two or three years following the reading of these essays, Dalton published several papers
on similar topics, that on the absorption of gases by water and other liquids (1803), containing his law of
partial pressures now known as Dalton's law.

The most important of all Dalton's investigations are those concerned with the atomic theory in chemistry,
with which his name is inseparably associated. It has been proposed that this theory was suggested to
him either by researches on ethylene (olefiant gas) and methane (carburetted hydrogen) or by analysis
of nitrous oxide (protoxide of azote) and nitrogen dioxide (deutoxide of azote), both views resting on the
authority of Thomas Thomson. However, a study of Dalton's own laboratory notebooks, discovered in the
rooms of the Lit & Phil,[9] concluded that so far from Dalton being led by his search for an explanation of
the law of multiple proportions to the idea that chemical combination consists in the interaction of atoms
of definite and characteristic weight, the idea of atoms arose in his mind as a purely physical concept,
forced upon him by study of the physical properties of the atmosphere and other gases. The first
published indications of this idea are to be found at the end of his paper on the absorption of gases
already mentioned, which was read on 21 October 1803, though not published until 1805. Here he says:

Why does not water admit its bulk of every kind of gas alike? This question I have duly considered, and
though I am not able to satisfy myself completely I am nearly persuaded that the circumstance depends
on the weight and number of the ultimate particles of the several gases.

Atomic weights
Dalton proceeded to print his first published table of relative atomic weights. Six elements appear in this
table, namely hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, sulfur, and phosphorus, with the atom of hydrogen
conventionally assumed to weigh 1. Dalton provided no indication in this first paper how he had arrived at
these numbers.[citation needed] However, in his laboratory notebook under the date 6 September 1803[10] there
appears a list in which he sets out the relative weights of the atoms of a number of elements, derived
from analysis of water, ammonia, carbon dioxide, etc. by chemists of the time.

It appears, then, that confronted with the problem of calculating the relative diameter of the atoms of
which, he was convinced, all gases were made, he used the results of chemical analysis. Assisted by the
assumption that combination always takes place in the simplest possible way, he thus arrived at the idea
that chemical combination takes place between particles of different weights, and it was this which
differentiated his theory from the historic speculations of the Greeks, such
as Democritus and Lucretius.[citation needed]

The extension of this idea to substances in general necessarily led him to the law of multiple proportions,
and the comparison with experiment brilliantly confirmed his deduction. [11] It may be noted that in a paper
on the proportion of the gases or elastic fluids constituting the atmosphere, read by him in November
1802, the law of multiple proportions appears to be anticipated in the words: "The elements of oxygen
may combine with a certain portion of nitrous gas or with twice that portion, but with no intermediate
quantity", but there is reason to suspect that this sentence may have been added some time after the
reading of the paper, which was not published until 1805.

Compounds were listed as binary, ternary, quaternary, etc. (molecules composed of two, three, four, etc.
atoms) in the New System of Chemical Philosophy depending on the number of atoms a compound had
in its simplest, empirical form.

He hypothesized the structure of compounds can be represented in whole number ratios. So, one atom of
element X combining with one atom of element Y is a binary compound. Furthermore, one atom of
element X combining with two elements of Y or vice versa, is a ternary compound. Many of the first
compounds listed in the New System of Chemical Philosophy correspond to modern views, although
many others do not.
Various atoms and molecules as depicted in John Dalton's A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808).

Dalton used his own symbols to visually represent the atomic structure of compounds. These have made
it in New System of Chemical Philosophywhere Dalton listed a number of elements, and common
compounds.

Five main points of Dalton's atomic theory

1. Elements are made of extremely small particles called atoms.

2. Atoms of a given element are identical in size, mass, and other properties; atoms of different
elements differ in size, mass, and other properties.
3. Atoms cannot be subdivided, created, or destroyed.
4. Atoms of different elements combine in simple whole-number ratios to form chemical compounds.
5. In chemical reactions, atoms are combined, separated, or rearranged.
Dalton proposed an additional "rule of greatest simplicity" that created controversy, since it could not be
independently confirmed.

When atoms combine in only one ratio, "..it must be presumed to be a binary one, unless some
cause appear to the contrary".
This was merely an assumption, derived from faith in the simplicity of nature. No evidence was then
available to scientists to deduce how many atoms of each element combine to form compound
molecules. But this or some other such rule was absolutely necessary to any incipient theory, since
one needed an assumed molecular formula in order to calculate relative atomic weights. In any case,
Dalton's "rule of greatest simplicity" caused him to assume that the formula for water was OH
and ammonia was NH, quite different from our modern understanding.

Despite the uncertainty at the heart of Dalton's atomic theory, the principles of the theory survived. To
be sure, the conviction that atoms cannot be subdivided, created, or destroyed into smaller particles
when they are combined, separated, or rearranged in chemical reactions is inconsistent with the
existence of nuclear fusion and nuclear fission, but such processes are nuclear reactions and not
chemical reactions. In addition, the idea that all atoms of a given element are identical in their
physical and chemical properties is not precisely true, as we now know that different isotopes of an
element have slightly varying weights. However, Dalton had created a theory of immense power and
importance. Indeed, Dalton's innovation was fully as important for the future of the science as Antoine
Laurent Lavoisier's oxygen-based chemistry had been.

Later years

James Prescott Joule

Dalton communicated his atomic theory to Thomson who, by consent, included an outline of it in the
third edition of his System of Chemistry (1807), and Dalton gave a further account of it in the first part
of the first volume of his New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808). The second part of this volume
appeared in 1810, but the first part of the second volume was not issued till 1827. This delay is not
explained by any excess of care in preparation, for much of the matter was out of date and the
appendix giving the author's latest views is the only portion of special interest. The second part of vol.
ii. never appeared. For Rees's Cyclopaedia Dalton contributed articles on Chemistry and
Meteorology, but the topics are not known.

He was president of the Lit & Phil from 1817 until his death, contributing 116 memoirs. Of these the
earlier are the most important. In one of them, read in 1814, he explains the principles of volumetric
analysis, in which he was one of the earliest workers. In 1840 a paper on
the phosphates and arsenates, often regarded as a weaker work, was refused by the Royal Society,
and he was so incensed that he published it himself. He took the same course soon afterwards with
four other papers, two of which (On the quantity of acids, bases and salts in different varieties of
salts and On a new and easy method of analysing sugar) contain his discovery, regarded by him as
second in importance only to the atomic theory, that certain anhydrates, when dissolved in water,
cause no increase in its volume, his inference being that the salt enters into the pores of the water.
James Prescott Joule was a famous pupil of Dalton.

Dalton's experimental method

Sir Humphry Davy, 1830 engraving based on the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830)

As an investigator, Dalton was often content with rough and inaccurate instruments, though better
ones were obtainable. Sir Humphry Davy described him as "a very coarse experimenter", who almost
always found the results he required, trusting to his head rather than his hands. On the other hand,
historians who have replicated some of his crucial experiments have confirmed Dalton's skill and
precision.

In the preface to the second part of Volume I of his New System, he says he had so often been
misled by taking for granted the results of others that he determined to write "as little as possible but
what I can attest by my own experience", but this independence he carried so far that it sometimes
resembled lack of receptivity. Thus he distrusted, and probably never fully accepted, Gay-Lussac's
conclusions as to the combining volumes of gases. He held unconventional views on chlorine. Even
after its elementary character had been settled by Davy, he persisted in using the atomic weights he
himself had adopted, even when they had been superseded by the more accurate determinations of
other chemists. He always objected to the chemical notation devised by Jöns Jakob Berzelius,
although most thought that it was much simpler and more convenient than his own cumbersome
system of circular symbols.

Public and personal life

Before he had propounded the atomic theory, he had already attained a considerable scientific
reputation. In 1803, he was chosen to give a course of lectures on natural philosophy at the Royal
Institution in London, where he delivered another course in 1809–1810. However, some witnesses
reported that he was deficient in the qualities that make an attractive lecturer, being harsh and
indistinct in voice, ineffective in the treatment of his subject, and singularly wanting in the language
and power of illustration.

In 1810, Sir Humphry Davy asked him to offer himself as a candidate for the fellowship of the Royal
Society, but Dalton declined, possibly for financial reasons. However, in 1822 he was proposed
without his knowledge, and on election paid the usual fee. Six years previously he had been made a
corresponding member of the French Académie des Sciences, and in 1830 he was elected as one of
its eight foreign associates in place of Davy. In 1833, Earl Grey's government conferred on him a
pension of £150, raised in 1836 to £300.

Dalton never married and had only a few close friends, all in all as a Quaker he lived a modest and
unassuming life.[12]

He lived for more than a quarter of a century with his friend the Rev. W. Johns (1771–1845), in
George Street, Manchester, where his daily round of laboratory work and tuition was broken only by
annual excursions to the Lake District and occasional visits to London. In 1822 he paid a short visit to
Paris, where he met many distinguished resident scientists. He attended several of the earlier
meetings of the British Association at York, Oxford, Dublin and Bristol.

Death and legacy

Bust of Dalton byChantrey

Painting portrait of Dalton in later life

Dalton suffered a minor stroke in 1837, and a second one in 1838 left him with a speech impediment,
though he remained able to do experiments. In May 1844 he had yet another stroke; on 26 July he
recorded with trembling hand his last meteorological observation. On 27 July, in Manchester, Dalton
fell from his bed and was found lifeless by his attendant. Approximately 40,000 people filed by his
coffin as it was laid in state in the Manchester Town Hall.[13] He was buried in Manchester in Ardwick
cemetery. The cemetery is now a playing field, but pictures of the original grave are in published
materials.[14][15]

A bust of Dalton, by Chantrey, was publicly subscribed for[16] and placed in the entrance hall of
the Royal Manchester Institution. Chantrey also crafted a large statue of Dalton, now in
the Manchester Town Hall. The statue was erected while Dalton was still alive and it has been said:
"He is probably the only scientist who got a statue in his lifetime".[13]

In honour of Dalton's work, many chemists and biochemists use the (as yet unofficial)
unit dalton (abbreviated Da) to denote one atomic mass unit, or 1/12 the weight of a neutral atom
of carbon-12. There is a John Dalton Street connecting Deansgate and Albert Square in the centre of
Manchester.

Manchester Metropolitan University has a building named after John Dalton and occupied by the
Faculty of Science and Engineering, in which the majority of its Science & Engineering lectures and
classes take place. A statue is outside the John Dalton Building of the Manchester Metropolitan
University in Chester Street which has been moved from Piccadilly. It was the work of William Theed
(after Chantrey) and is dated 1855 (it was in Piccadilly until 1966).

The University of Manchester has a hall of residence called Dalton Hall; it also established two Dalton
Chemical Scholarships, two Dalton Mathematical Scholarships, and a Dalton Prize for Natural
History. There is a Dalton Medal awarded occasionally by the Manchester Literary and Philosophical
Society (only 12 times altogether).

Dalton Township in southern Ontario was named for Dalton. It has, since 2001, been absorbed into
the City of Kawartha Lakes. However the township name was used in a massive new park: Dalton
Digby Wildlands Provincial Park, itself renamed since 2002.

A lunar crater has been named after Dalton. "Daltonism" became a common term for colour
blindness and "Daltonien" is the actual French word for "colour blind".

The inorganic section of the UK's Royal Society of Chemistry is named after Dalton (Dalton Division),
and the Society's academic journal for inorganic chemistry also bears his name (Dalton
Transactions).

The name Dalton can often be heard in the halls of many Quaker schools, for example, one of the
school houses in Coram House, the primary sector of Ackworth School, is called Dalton.

Much of his collected work was damaged during the bombing of the Manchester Literary and
Philosophical Society on 24 December 1940. This event prompted Isaac Asimov to say, "John
Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing
of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war". The damaged papers are now in
the John Rylands Library having been deposited in the university library by the Society.
What Dalton Discovered

(1766-1844)

Notice the big old gap between the time when Democritus first shouted, "Atomos! We've
got atomos here!" to the publication of Dalton's more formal theory? Told you Aristotle
threw us back into the atomic dark ages a bit. It's not that nobody was thinking about
atoms at all for nearly 2000 years (check out that expanded timeline), but what Dalton
discovered and what he formally published about atoms earns him the next slot on our
field trip through the history of atomic models.

His Experiment: Observing Chemical Reactions

 Dalton spent a lot of time in his lab observing various chemical
reactions. By looking at how things reacted and recombined to form new substances,
Dalton was able to build on Democritus' idea of atoms as the fundamental building
block's of matter and go further to say that there were many different "flavors" or kinds
of atoms.

His Model: Billiard Balls

Where Dalton and Democritus would have agreed (if they hadn't
been separated by 2000 years) is that atoms were the smallest, most basic unit of
matter. Indivisible into smaller parts. (Of course they were both wrong, but we'll get to
that later). Where Dalton advanced atomic theory was by saying we had many different
atoms out there. His model, often dubbed the "billiard ball" model, basically says you
can't divide the atom into smaller pieces.

Dalton also came up with some very important things to know about atoms and how
they combine. Most of these still hold true!

1. All matter is made up of atoms, and these little guys are indivisible (can't break them
apart) and indestructible (can't break them down). He was half right.
2. All atoms of a given element are "the same" (okay, careful here - remember you know
more than Dalton did. "The same" still works for number of protons, but now that we
know about isotopes it's hard to say all atoms of an element are "the same" if by that you
mean identical.)
3. Compounds form when two or more different types of atoms bond chemically, and they
do this is predictable, fixed ratios.
4. Atoms are not destroyed during chemical reactions, they are just rearranged a bit.
Okay, so today we know atoms are made of smaller parts, and you can break them down
in nuclear (not chemical) reactions, but overall Dalton set up a great base of knowledge
for the next group of atomic scientists to build on.

Plum pudding model

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A schematic presentation of the plum pudding model of the atom; in Thomson's mathematical model the "corpuscles" (or
modern electrons) were arranged non-randomly, in rotating rings

The current model of the sub-atomic structure involves a dense nucleus surrounded by a probabilistic "cloud" of electrons

The plum pudding model of the atom by J. J. Thomson, who discovered the electron in 1897, was proposed
in 1904 before the discovery of the atomic nucleus in order to add the electron to the atomic model. In this
model, the atom is composed of electrons (which Thomson still called "corpuscles", though G. J. Stoney had
proposed that atoms of electricity be called electrons in 1894[1]) surrounded by a soup of positive charge to
balance the electrons' negative charges, like negatively charged "raisins" surrounded by positively charged
"pudding". The electrons (as we know them today) were thought to be positioned throughout the atom, but with
many structures possible for positioning multiple electrons, particularly rotating rings of electrons (see below).
Instead of a soup, the atom was also sometimes said to have had a "cloud" of positive charge.

With this model, Thomson abandoned his earlier "nebular atom" hypothesis in which the atom was composed
of immaterial vortices. Now, at least part of the atom was to be composed of Thomson's particulate negative
corpuscles, although the rest of the positively charged part of the atom remained somewhat nebulous and ill-
defined.

The 1904 Thomson model was disproved by the 1909 gold foil experiment of Hans Geiger and Ernest
Marsden. This was interpreted by Ernest Rutherford in 1911[2] [3] to imply a very small nucleus of the atom
containing a very high positive charge (in the case of gold, enough to balance about 100 electrons), thus
leading to the Rutherford model of the atom. Although gold has an atomic number of 79, immediately after
Rutherford's paper appeared in 1911 Antonius Van den Broek made the intuitive suggestion that atomic
number is nuclear charge. The matter required experiment to decide. Henry Moseley's work showed
experimentally in 1913 (see Moseley's law) that the effective nuclear charge was very close to the atomic
number (Moseley found only one unit difference), and Moseley referenced only the papers of Van den Broek
and Rutherford. This work culminated in the solar-system-like (but quantum-limited) Bohr model of the atom in
the same year, in which a nucleus containing an atomic number of positive charge is surrounded by an equal
number of electrons in orbital shells. Bohr had also inspired Moseley's work.

Thomson's model was compared (though not by Thomson) to a British dessert called plum pudding, hence the
name. Thomson's paper was published in the March 1904 edition of the Philosophical Magazine, the leading
British science journal of the day. In Thomson's view:

... the atoms of the elements consist of a number of negatively electrified corpuscles enclosed in a sphere of
uniform positive electrification, ...[4]

In this model, the electrons were free to rotate within the blob or cloud of positive substance. These orbits were
stabilized in the model by the fact that when an electron moved farther from the center of the positive cloud, it
felt a larger net positive inward force, because there was more material of opposite charge, inside its orbit
(see Gauss's law). In Thomson's model, electrons were free to rotate in rings which were further stabilized by
interactions between the electrons, and spectra were to be accounted for by energy differences of different ring
orbits. Thomson attempted to make his model account for some of the major spectral lines known for some
elements, but was not notably successful at this. Still, Thomson's model (along with a similar Saturnian ring
model for atomic electrons, also put forward in 1904 by Nagaoka after James Clerk Maxwell's model of
Saturn's rings), were earlier harbingers of the later and more successful solar-system-like Bohr model of the
atom.

Rutherford model
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Basic diagram of the atomic planetary model: electrons in green and nucleus in red

3D animation of an atom by Ernest Rutherford.

The Rutherford model is a model of the atom devised by Ernest Rutherford. Rutherford directed the
famous Geiger-Marsden experiment in 1909 which suggested, upon Rutherford's 1911 analysis, that the so-
called "plum pudding model" of J. J. Thomson of the atom was incorrect. Rutherford's new model[1] for the
atom, based on the experimental results, contained the new features of a relatively high central charge
concentrated into a very small volume in comparison to the rest of the atom and with this central volume also
containing the bulk of the atomic mass of the atom. This region would be named the "nucleus" of the atom in
later years.
Experimental basis for the model[edit]
Rutherford overturned Thomson's model in 1911 with his well-known gold foil experiment in which he
demonstrated that the atom has a tiny, heavy nucleus. Rutherford designed an experiment to use the
alpha particles emitted by a radioactive element as probes to the unseen world of atomic structure.

Rutherford presented his own physical model for subatomic structure, as an interpretation for the
unexpected experimental results. In it, the atom is made up of a central charge (this is the modern atomic
nucleus, though Rutherford did not use the term "nucleus" in his paper) surrounded by a cloud of
(presumably) orbiting electrons. In this May 1911 paper, Rutherford only commits himself to a small
central region of very high positive or negative charge in the atom.

For concreteness, consider the passage of a high speed α particle through an atom having a positive
central charge N e, and surrounded by a compensating charge of N electrons.[2]

From purely energetic considerations of how far particles of known speed would be able to penetrate
toward a central charge of 100 e, Rutherford was able to calculate that the radius of his goldcentral
charge would need to be less (how much less could not be told) than 3.4 x 10 −14 metres. This was in a
gold atom known to be 10−10 meters or so in radius—a very surprising finding, as it implied a strong
central charge less than 1/3000th of the diameter of the atom.

The Rutherford model served to concentrate a great deal of the atom's charge and mass to a very small
core, but didn't attribute any structure to the remaining electrons and remaining atomic mass. It did
mention the atomic model of Hantaro Nagaoka, in which the electrons are arranged in one or more rings,
with the specific metaphorical structure of the stable rings of Saturn. Theplum pudding model of J.J.
Thomson also had rings of orbiting electrons. Jean Baptiste Perrin claimed in his Nobel Lecture [3] that he
was the first one to suggest the model in his paper dated 1901.

The Rutherford paper suggested that the central charge of an atom might be "proportional" to its atomic
mass in hydrogen mass units u (roughly 1/2 of it, in Rutherford's model). For gold, this mass number is
197 (not then known to great accuracy) and was therefore modeled by Rutherford to be possibly 196 u.
However, Rutherford did not attempt to make the direct connection of central charge to atomic number,
since gold's "atomic number" (at that time merely its place number in the periodic table) was 79, and
Rutherford had modeled the charge to be about + 100 units (he had actually suggested 98 units of
positive charge, to make half of 196). Thus, Rutherford did not formally suggest the two numbers
(periodic table place, 79, and nuclear charge, 98 or 100) might be exactly the same.

A month after Rutherford's paper appeared, the proposal regarding the exact identity of atomic number
and nuclear charge was made by Antonius van den Broek, and later confirmed experimentally within two
years, by Henry Moseley.

Key points[edit]

 The atom's electron cloud does not influence alpha particle scattering.
 Much of an atom's charge (specifically, its positive charge) is concentrated in a relatively tiny volume
at the center of the atom, known today as the nucleus. The magnitude of this charge is proportional
to (up to a charge number that can be approximately half of) the atom's atomic mass - the remaining
 mass is now known to be mostly attributed to neutrons. This concentrated central mass and charge is
responsible for deflecting both alpha and beta particles.
 The mass of heavy atoms such as gold is mostly concentrated in the central charge region, since
calculations show it is not deflected or moved by the high speed alpha particles, which have very
high momentum in comparison to electrons, but not with regard to a heavy atom as a whole.
Contribution to modern science[edit]
After Rutherford's discovery, scientists started to realize that the atom is not ultimately a single particle,
but is made up of far smaller subatomic particles. Subsequent research determined the exact atomic
structure which led to Rutherford’s gold foil experiment. Scientists eventually discovered that atoms have
a positively-charged nucleus (with an exact atomic number of charges) in the center, with a radius of
about 1.2 x 10−15 meters x [Atomic Mass Number]1/3. Electrons were found to be even smaller.

Later, scientists found the expected number of electrons (the same as the atomic number) in an atom by
using X-rays. When an X-ray passes through an atom some of it is scattered while the rest passes
through the atom. Since the X-ray loses its intensity primarily due to scattering at electrons, by noting the
rate of decrease in X-ray intensity, the number of electrons contained in an atom can be accurately
estimated.

Symbolism[edit]
See also Bohr model, which applies just as well to the section below.

Generic atomic planetary model.

Shield of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission

Rutherford's model deferred to the idea of many electrons in rings, per Nagaoka. However, once Niels
Bohr modified this view into a picture of just a few planet-like electrons for light atoms, the Rutherford-
Bohr model caught the imagination of the public. It has since continually been used as a symbol for atoms
and even for "atomic" energy (even though this is more properly considered nuclear energy). Examples of
its use over the past century include:

 The logo of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, which was in part responsible for its later
usage in relation to nuclear fissiontechnology in particular.
 The flag of the International Atomic Energy Agency is a Rutherford atom, enclosed in olive branches.
 The US minor league baseball Albuquerque Isotopes' logo is a Rutherford atom, with the electron
orbits forming an A.
 A similar symbol, the Atomic whirl, was chosen as the symbol for the American Atheists, and has
come to be used as a symbol of atheism in general.
 The Unicode Miscellaneous Symbols codepoint U+269B (⚛) uses a Rutherford atom.
 On maps, it is generally used to indicate a nuclear power installation.

Bohr model
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
'Rutherford–Bohr model' and 'Bohr-Rutherford diagram' redirect to this page. 'Bohr model' is not to be
confused with Bohr equation.
 The Rutherford–Bohr model of the hydrogen atom (Z = 1) or a hydrogen-like ion (Z > 1), where the negatively

charged electron confined to an atomic shell encircles a small, positively charged atomic nucleusand where an electron jump

between orbits is accompanied by an emitted or absorbed amount of electromagnetic energy (hν).[1] The orbits in which the

electron may travel are shown as grey circles; their radius increases as n2, where n is the principal quantum number. The 3 →

2 transition depicted here produces the first line of the Balmer series, and for hydrogen (Z = 1) it results in a photon

of wavelength 656 nm (red light).

In atomic physics, the Bohr model, introduced by Niels Bohr in 1913, depicts the atom as a small,
positively charged nucleussurrounded by electrons that travel in circular orbits around the nucleus—similar
in structure to the solar system, but with attraction provided by electrostatic forces rather than gravity. After
the cubic model (1902), the plum-pudding model (1904), the Saturnian model(1904), and the Rutherford
model (1911) came the Rutherford–Bohr model or just Bohr model for short (1913). The improvement to
the Rutherford model is mostly a quantum physical interpretation of it. The Bohr model has been
superseded, but the quantum theory remains sound.

The model's key success lay in explaining the Rydberg formula for the spectral emission lines of
atomic hydrogen. While the Rydberg formula had been known experimentally, it did not gain a theoretical
underpinning until the Bohr model was introduced. Not only did the Bohr model explain the reason for the
structure of the Rydberg formula, it also provided a justification for its empirical results in terms of
fundamental physical constants.

The Bohr model is a relatively primitive model of the hydrogen atom, compared to the valence shell atom.
As a theory, it can be derived as a first-order approximation of the hydrogen atom using the broader and
much more accurate quantum mechanics, and thus may be considered to be an obsolete scientific theory.
However, because of its simplicity, and its correct results for selected systems (see below for application),
 the Bohr model is still commonly taught to introduce students to quantum mechanics, before moving on to
the more accurate, but more complex, valence shell atom. A related model was originally proposed
by Arthur Erich Haas in 1910, but was rejected. The quantum theory of the period between Planck's
discovery of the quantum (1900) and the advent of a full-blown quantum mechanics (1925) is often
referred to as the old quantum theory.

The Cloud Model

Erwin Schrödinger built upon the thoughts of Bohr yet took them in a new
direction. He developed the probability function for the Hydrogen atom (and a few
others). The probability function basically describes a cloud-like region where the
electron is likely to be found. It can not say with any certainty, where the electron
actually is at any point in time, yet can describe where it ought to be. Clarity through
fuzziness, is one way to describe the idea. The model based on this probability
equation can best be described as the cloud model.

The cloud model represents a sort of

history of where the electron has probably
been and where it is likely to be
going. The red dot in the middle represents
the nucleus while the red dot around the
outside represents an instance of the
electron. Imagine, as the electron moves it
leaves a trace of where it was. This
collection of traces quickly begins to resemble a cloud. The
probable locations of the electron predicted by Schrödinger's equation
happen to coincide with the locations specified in Bohr's model.

Erwin Schrödinger
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Schrödinger (disambiguation).
 Erwin Schrödinger

Born Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

12 August 1887
Vienna, Austria-Hungary

Died 4 January 1961 (aged 73)

Vienna, Austria

Citizenship Austria, Ireland

Nationality Austrian

Fields Physics

Institutions University of BreslauUniversity of

Zürich Humboldt University of Berlin

University of Oxford
University of Graz
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
Ghent University

Alma mater University of Vienna

Doctoral advisor Friedrich Hasenöhrl

 Other academic Franz S. Exner
advisors
Friedrich Hasenöhrl

Notable students Linus Pauling

Felix Bloch
Brendan Scaife

Known for [show]

Notable awards Nobel Prize in Physics (1933)

Max Planck Medal (1937)

Spouse Annemarie Bertel (1920–61)[1]

Signature

Bust of Schrödinger, in the courtyard arcade of the main building, University of Vienna, Austria

Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (/ˈʃroʊdɪŋər/; German: [ˈɛʁviːn ˈʃʁøːdɪŋɐ]; 12 August 1887 – 4
January 1961) was an Austrianphysicist who developed a number of fundamental results in the field
of quantum theory, which formed the basis of wave mechanics: he formulated the wave equation (stationary
and time-dependent Schrödinger equation) and revealed the identity of his development of the formalism
and matrix mechanics. Schrödinger proposed an original interpretation of the physical meaning of the wave
function and in subsequent years repeatedly criticized the conventional Copenhagen interpretation of quantum
mechanics (using e.g. the paradox of Schrödinger's cat).

In addition, he was the author of many works in various fields of physics: statistical
mechanics and thermodynamics, physics of dielectrics, color theory, electrodynamics, general relativity,
and cosmology, and he made several attempts to construct a unified field theory. In his book What Is
Life? Schrödinger addressed the problems of genetics, looking at the phenomenon of life from the point of view
of physics. He paid great attention to the philosophical aspects of science, ancient and oriental philosophical
concepts, ethics and religion.[2] He also wrote on philosophy and theoretical biology.

James Chadwick
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the bishop, see James Chadwick (bishop). For the American gynaecologist, see James Read Chadwick.

Sir James Chadwick

Born 20 October 1891

Bollington, Cheshire, England

Died 24 July 1974 (aged 82)

Cambridge, England

Citizenship United Kingdom

Fields Physics
 Institutions Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt
University of Liverpool
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Manhattan Project

Alma mater University of Manchester

University of Cambridge

Doctoral advisor Ernest Rutherford

Doctoral students Maurice Goldhaber

Ernest C. Pollard
Charles Drummond Ellis

Known for Discovery of the neutron

Manhattan Project

Notable awards Fellow of the Royal Society (1927)[1]

Hughes Medal (1932)
Nobel Prize in Physics (1935)
Knight Bachelor (1945)
Copley Medal (1950)
Franklin Medal (1951)
Companion of Honour (1970)

Sir James Chadwick CH FRS (20 October 1891 – 24 July 1974) was an English physicist who was awarded
the 1935 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery of the neutron in 1932. He was the head of the British
scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He wasknighted in England in 1945 for
achievements in physics.[1][2][3]

A graduate of the University of Manchester, where he studied under Ernest Rutherford, also known as the
father of nuclear physics. Chadwick was awarded an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission
for the Exhibition of 1851,[4] and elected to study beta radiation under Hans Geiger. Using Geiger's recently
developed Geiger counter, he was able to demonstrate that beta radiation produced a
continuous electromagnetic spectrum, and not discrete lines as had been thought. Still in Germany when World
War I broke out in Europe, he spent the war in the Ruhleben internment camp.

After the war, Chadwick followed Rutherford to the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge,
where Chadwick earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He was
 Rutherford's Assistant Director of Research at the Cavendish Laboratory for over a decade at a time when it
was one of the world's foremost centres for the study of physics, attracting students like John
Cockcroft, Norman Feather, and Mark Oliphant. In 1932, Chadwick pursued a line of research that led to his
discovery of the neutron. He went on to measure its mass.

Chadwick left the Cavendish Laboratory in 1935 to become a professor of physics at the University of
Liverpool, where he overhauled an antiquated laboratory and, by installing a cyclotron, made it an important
centre for the study of nuclear physics. During the Second World War, he carried out research as part of
the Tube Alloys project to build an atomic bomb. When the Quebec Agreement merged his project with the
AmericanManhattan Project, he became head of the British Mission, and worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory.
In July 1945, he viewed the Trinity nuclear test. Uncomfortable with the trend toward Big Science, Chadwick
became the Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1948. He

 Home

Top
Chadwick Atomic Model
Sub Topics

1. Atomic Planetary Model

2. Atomic Model with Proton and Neutron in the Nucleus

Introduction to chadwick atomic model:

Sir James Chadwick, (1891 –1974) was an English physicist and famous for his
discovery of Neutron. In 1913 Chadwick worked with Hans Geiger at the Technical
University of Berlin and he also worked with Ernest Rutherford. Chadwick discovered a
previously unknown particle neutron in the atomic nucleus in 1932. Chadwick's
discovery was significant for the fission of uranium 235 since neutrons do not need to
overcome any Coulomb barrier, unlike positively charged alpha particles, which are
repelled by the electrical forces present in the nuclei of other atoms, and neutrons can
therefore penetrate and split the nuclei of even the heaviest elements. He was honored
by the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society in 1932 and by the Nobel Prize for Physics in
1935 for the discovery of Neutron.

Atomic Planetary Model:

Back to Top
Rutherford who was a New Zealand physicist discovered the atomic nucleus in 1912. In
his model of the atom, positive electric charge and the majority of its mass were
concentrated in an almost point sized nucleus. In this Rutherford atomic model, the
electron in an atom moves around this nucleus like planets around the Sun. The electric
force of attraction between the negative charge of the electron and the positive charge
of the nucleus plays the same role as gravity plays for the planets and it was known as
"atomic planetary model". Rutherford's atom model is neither indivisible (as it is
composite), nor is it solid since it contains mostly empty space. The distance between
nucleus and electrons is 100,000 times greater than the diameter of the nucleus (1
Fermi =10-15 units) itself.

Atomic Model with Proton and Neutron in the Nucleus:

Back to Top

Rutherford has the idea that the nucleus is itself composed of nucleons and that these
nucleons are of two types:

 positively charged, proton

 neutrally charged, neutron