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Philosophical atomism
Dalton's law of multiple proportions
Dalton's atomic theory
Opposition to atomic theory
Isomerism
Mendeleev's periodic table
Brownian motion
Statistical mechanics
Discovery of subatomic particles
Discovery of the nucleus
First steps toward a quantum physical model of the atom
Discovery of isotopes
Discovery of nuclear particles
Quantum physical models of the atom
See also
Footnotes
Bibliography
Further reading
External links
Atomic theory

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Atomic model" redirects here. For the unrelated term in mathematical logic, see
atomic model (mathematical logic).
This article is about the historical development of understanding the existence and
behavior of atoms. For a history of the study of how atoms combine to form
molecules, see history of molecular theory. For the modern view of the atom which
developed from atomic theory, see atomic physics.

The current theoretical model of the atom involves a dense nucleus surrounded by a
probabilistic "cloud" of electrons
Atomic theory is the scientific theory that matter is composed of particles called
atoms. The concept that matter is composed of discrete particles is an ancient
idea, but gained scientific credence in the 18th and 19th centuries when scientists
found it could explain the behaviors of gases and how chemical elements reacted
with each other. By the end of the 19th century, atomic theory had gained
widespread acceptance in the scientific community.

The term "atom" comes from the Greek word atomos, which means "uncuttable". John
Dalton applied the term to the basic units of mass of the chemical elements under
the mistaken belief that chemical atoms are the fundamental particles in nature; it
was another century before scientists realized that Dalton's so-called atoms have
an underlying structure of their own. Particles which are truly indivisible are now
referred to as "elementary particles".

History
Philosophical atomism
Main article: Atomism
See also: Prima materia
The idea that matter is made up of discrete units is a very old idea, appearing in
many ancient cultures, including Greece and India. The word "atom" (Greek: ἄτομος;
atomos), meaning "uncuttable", was coined by the Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers
Leucippus and his pupil Democritus (c.460–c.370 BC).[1][2][3][4] Democritus taught
that atoms were infinite in number, uncreated, and eternal, and that the qualities
of an object result from the kind of atoms that compose it.[2][3][4] Democritus's
atomism was refined and elaborated by the later Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270
BC), and by the Roman Epicurean poet Lucretius (c.99–c.55 BC).[3][4] During the
Early Middle Ages, atomism was mostly forgotten in western Europe. During the 12th
century, it became known again in western Europe through references to it in the
newly-rediscovered writings of Aristotle.[3] The opposing view of matter upheld by
Aristotle was that matter was continuous and infinite and could be subdivided
without limit.[5][6]

In the 14th century, the rediscovery of major ancient works describing atomist
teachings, including Lucretius's De rerum natura and Diogenes Laërtius's Lives and
Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, led to increased scholarly attention on the
subject. Nonetheless, because atomism was associated with the philosophy of
Epicureanism, which contradicted orthodox Christian teachings, belief in atoms was
not considered acceptable by most European philosophers.[3] The French Catholic
priest Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) revived Epicurean atomism with modifications,
arguing that atoms were created by God and, though extremely numerous, are not
infinite in number. He was the first person who used the term "molecule" to
describe aggregation of atoms.[3][4] Gassendi's modified theory of atoms was
popularized in France by the physician François Bernier (1620–1688) and in England
by the natural philosopher Walter Charleton (1619–1707). The chemist Robert Boyle
(1627–1691) and the physicist Isaac Newton (1642–1727) both defended atomism and,
by the end of the 17th century, the idea of an atomistic foundation of nature had
become accepted by portions of the scientific community.[3]

Dalton's law of multiple proportions

From A New System of Chemical Philosophy, 1808.

Near the end of the 18th century, two laws about chemical reactions emerged without
referring to the notion of an atomic theory. The first was the law of conservation
of mass, closely associated with the work of Antoine Lavoisier, which states that
the total mass in a chemical reaction remains constant (that is, the reactants have
the same mass as the products).[7] The second was the law of definite proportions.
First established by the French chemist Joseph Proust in 1797 this law states that
if a compound is broken down into its constituent chemical elements, then the
masses of the constituents will always have the same proportions by weight,
regardless of the quantity or source of the original substance.[8]

John Dalton studied data gathered by himself and other scientists and noticed a
pattern that later came to be known as the law of multiple proportions. In
compounds which all contain a particular element, the content of that element will
differ across these compounds by ratios of small whole numbers. Dalton concluded
from all this that elements react with each other in discrete and consistent units
of weight. Borrowing the word from the philosophical tradition, Dalton called these
units atoms.

Example 1 — tin oxides: Dalton identified two oxides of tin. One is a grey powder
(which Dalton referred to as the "protoxide") in which for every 100 parts of tin
there is 13.5 parts of oxygen. The other oxide is a white powder (which Dalton
referred to as the "deutoxide") in which for every 100 parts of tin there are 27
parts of oxygen.[9] 13.5 and 27 form a ratio of 1:2. Dalton concluded that in the
grey oxide, there is one oxygen atom for every tin atom, and in the white oxide
there are two oxygen atoms for every tin atom. These oxides are today known as
tin(II) oxide (SnO) and tin(IV) oxide (SnO2) respectively.

Example 2 — iron oxides: Dalton identified two oxides of iron. One is a black
powder in which for every 100 parts of iron there are about 28 parts of oxygen. The
other is a red powder in which for every 100 parts of iron there are 42 parts of
oxygen.[10] 28 and 42 form a ratio of 2:3. These oxides are today known as iron(II)
oxide (better known as wüstite) and iron(III) oxide (the major constituent of
rust). Their modern formulas are Fe2O2 and Fe2O3 respectively.

Example 3 — nitrogen oxides: Dalton was aware of three oxides of nitrogen: "nitrous
oxide", "nitrous gas", and "nitric acid"[11] (these compounds are known today as
nitrous oxide, nitric oxide, and nitrogen dioxide respectively). Dalton understood
that "Nitrous oxide" is 63.3% nitrogen and 36.7% oxygen, which means it has 80 g of
oxygen for every 140 g of nitrogen. "Nitrous gas" is 44.05% nitrogen and 55.95%
oxygen, which means there are 160 g of oxygen for every 140 g of nitrogen. "Nitric
acid" is 29.5% nitrogen and 70.5% oxygen, which means it has 320 g of oxygen for
every 140 g of nitrogen. 80 g, 160 g, and 320 g form a ratio of 1:2:4. Dalton's
formulas for these compounds were N2O, NO, and NO2, essentially the same as
today's.

Dalton's atomic theory

From the evidence provided by the law of multiple proportions Dalton developed his
atomic theory. A central problem for the theory was to determine the relative
weights of the atoms of various elements. The atomic weight of an element is the
weight an atom of that element is compared to the weights of atoms of the other
elements. Dalton and his contemporaries could not measure the absolute weight of
atoms—i.e. their weight in grams—because atoms were far too small to be directly
measured with the technologies that existed in the 19th century. Instead, they
measured how heavy atoms of various elements were relative to atoms of hydrogen,
which chemists of Dalton's day knew was the lightest element in nature.

Dalton estimated the atomic weights according to the mass ratios in which they
combined, with the weight of the hydrogen atom taken conventionally as unity.
However, Dalton did not realize that some elements exist as molecules in their
natural pure form—-e.g. pure oxygen exists as O2. He also mistakenly believed that
the simplest compound between any two elements is always one atom of each (so he
thought water was HO, not H2O).[12] This, in addition to the limitations of his
apparatus, flawed his results. For instance, in 1803 he believed that oxygen atoms
were 5.5 times heavier than hydrogen atoms, because in water he measured 5.5 grams
of oxygen for every 1 gram of hydrogen and believed the formula for water was HO.
Adopting better data, in 1806 he concluded that the atomic weight of oxygen must
actually be 7 rather than 5.5, and he retained this weight for the rest of his
life. Others at this time had already concluded from more precise measurements that
the oxygen atom must weigh 8 relative to hydrogen equals 1, if one assumes Dalton's
formula for the water molecule (HO), or 16 if one assumes the modern water formula
(H2O).[13]

The flaw in Dalton's theory was corrected in principle in 1811 by Amedeo Avogadro.
Avogadro had proposed that equal volumes of any two gases, at equal temperature and
pressure, contain equal numbers of molecules (in other words, the mass of a gas's
particles does not affect the volume that it occupies).[14] Avogadro's hypothesis,
now usually called Avogadro's law, provided a method for deducing the relative
weights of the molecules of gaseous elements, for if the hypothesis is correct
relative gas densities directly indicate the relative weights of the particles that
compose the gases. This way of thinking led directly to a second hypothesis: the
particles of certain elemental gases were not atoms, but molecules consisting of
two atoms each; and when combining chemically these molecules often split in two.
For instance, the fact that two liters of hydrogen will react with just one liter
of oxygen to produce two liters of water vapor (at constant pressure and
temperature) suggested that a single oxygen molecule must split in two in order to
form two molecules of water. This also meant that the water molecule must be H2O.
Thus, Avogadro was able to offer more accurate estimates of the atomic mass of
oxygen and various other elements, and made a distinction between molecules and
atoms. What we now call atoms Avogadro called "elementary molecules", and what we
now call molecules Avogadro called "compound molecules".[15]

Opposition to atomic theory

Dalton's atomic theory was not immediately accepted by all scientists.

One problem was the lack of uniform nomenclature. The word "atom" implied
indivisibility, but Dalton instead defined an atom as being the basic particle of
any substance, which meant that "compound atoms" such as carbon dioxide could
divided, as opposed to "elementary atoms".[16] Other scientists used their own
nomenclature, which only added to the general confusion. For instance, J. J.
Berzelius used the term "organic atoms" to refer to particles containing three or
more elements, because he thought this only existed in organic compounds.[17]

A second problem was philosophical. Scientists in the 19th century had no way of
directly observing atoms. They inferred the existence of atoms through indirect
observations, such as Dalton's law of multiple proportions. Some Scientists,
notably those who ascribed to the school of positivism, argued that scientists
should not attempt to deduce the deeper reality of the universe, but only systemize
what patterns they can directly observe. The anti-atomists argued that while atoms
might be a useful abstraction for predicting how elements react, they do not
reflect concrete reality.

Such scientists were sometimes known as "equivalentists", because they preferred

the theory of equivalent weights, which is a generalization of Proust's law of
definite proportions. For example, 1 gram of hydrogen will combine with 8 grams of
oxygen to form 9 grams of water, therefore the equivalent weight of oxygen is 8
grams. This position was eventually quashed by two important advancements that
happened later in the 19th century: the development of the periodic table and the
discovery that molecules have an internal architecture that determines their
properties.[18]

Dalton's law of multiple proportions was also shown to not be a universal law when
it came to organic substances. For instance, in oleic acid there is 34 g of
hydrogen for every 216 g of carbon, and in methane there is 72 g of hydrogen for
every 216 g of carbon. 34 and 72 form a ratio of 17:36, which is not a ratio of
small whole numbers. We know now that carbon-based substances can have very large
molecules, larger than any the other elements can form. Oleic acid's formula is
C18H34O2 and methane's is CH4.[19]

Isomerism
Scientists soon discovered cases of substances that have the same proportional
elemental composition but different properties. For instance, in 1827, Friedrich
Wöhler discovered that silver fulminate and silver cyanate are both 107 parts
silver, 12 parts carbon, 14 parts nitrogen, and 12 parts oxygen (we now know their
formulas as both AgCNO). Wöhler also discovered that urea and ammonium cyanate both
have the same composition (we now know their formulas are CH4N2O) but different
properties. In 1830, Jöns Jacob Berzelius introduced the term isomerism to describe
the phenomenon. Most chemists of the 1830s and later accepted the suggestion that
isomerism resulted from the differing arrangements of the same numbers and types of
atoms, resulting in distinct substances. The numbers of isomers proliferated
rapidly with the development of organic chemistry, especially after the
introduction of atomic valence and structural theory in the 1860s. Consider, for
example, pentane (C5H12). According to the theories of valence and structure, there
are three possible atomic configurations for the pentane molecule, and there really
are three different substances that have the same composition as pentane but
different properties.[20][21]

n-pentane

isopentane

neopentane
Molecular structure based on valence of atoms correctly predicted exactly three
possible isomers for pentane (C5H12).
Isomerism was not something that could be fully explained by alternative theories
to atomic theory, such as radical theory and the theory of types.[22][23]

In 1860, Louis Pasteur hypothesized that the molecules of isomers might have the
same composition but different arrangements of their atoms in three dimensions.[24]
In 1874, Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff proposed that the carbon atom forms bonds to
other atoms in a tetrahedral arrangement. Working from this hypothesis, he could
explain cases of isomerism where the relevant molecules appeared to have the same
basic skeletal structure; the two molecules differed only in their three-
dimensional spatial configurations, like two otherwise identical left and right
hands, or two identical spirals that wind clockwise and counterclockwise. [25]

Mendeleev's periodic table

Main article: Periodic table
Dmitrii Mendeleev noticed that when he arranged the elements in a row according to
their atomic weights, there was a certain periodicity to them.[26]: 117 For
instance, the second element, lithium, had similar properties to the ninth element,
sodium, and the sixteenth element, potassium — a period of seven. Likewise,
beryllium, magnesium, and calcium were similar and all were seven places apart from
each other on Mendeleev's table (eight places apart on the modern table). Using
these patterns, Mendeleev predicted the existence and properties of new elements,
which were later discovered in nature: scandium, gallium, and germanium.[26]: 118
Moreover, the periodic table could predict how many atoms of other elements that an
atom could bond with — e.g., germanium and carbon are in the same group on the
table and their atoms both combine with two oxygen atoms each (GeO2 and CO2).
Mendeleev found these patterns to confirm the hypothesis that matter is made of
atoms because it showed that the elements could be categorized by their atomic
weight. Inserting a new element into the middle of a period would break the
parallel between that period and the next, and would also violate Dalton's law of
multiple proportions.[27]

Mendeleev's periodic table from 1871.

Brownian motion
In 1827, the British botanist Robert Brown observed that dust particles inside
pollen grains floating in water constantly jiggled about for no apparent reason. In
1905, Albert Einstein theorized that this Brownian motion was caused by the water
molecules continuously knocking the grains about, and developed a mathematical
model to describe it. This model was validated experimentally in 1908 by French
physicist Jean Perrin, who used Einstein's equations to determine the size of
atoms.[28]

Kinetic diameters of various simple molecules

Molecule Perrier's measurements[29] Modern measurements
Helium 1.7 × 10−10 m 2.6 × 10−10 m
Argon 2.7 × 10−10 m 3.4 × 10−10 m
Mercury 2.8 × 10−10 m 3 × 10−10 m
Hydrogen 2 × 10−10 m 2.89 × 10−10 m
Oxygen 2.6 × 10−10 m 3.46 × 10−10 m
Nitrogen 2.7 × 10−10 m 3.64 × 10−10 m
Chlorine 4 × 10−10 m 3.20 × 10−10 m
Statistical mechanics
In order to introduce the Ideal gas law and statistical forms of physics, it was
necessary to postulate the existence of atoms. In 1738, Swiss physicist and
mathematician Daniel Bernoulli postulated that the pressure of gases and heat were
both caused by the underlying motion of molecules.

In 1860, James Clerk Maxwell, who was a vocal proponent of atomism, was the first
to use statistical mechanics in physics.[30] Ludwig Boltzmann and Rudolf Clausius
expanded his work on gases and the laws of Thermodynamics especially the second law
relating to entropy. In the 1870s, Josiah Willard Gibbs extended the laws of
entropy and thermodynamics and coined the term "statistical mechanics." Einstein
later independently reinvented Gibbs' laws, because they had only been printed in
an obscure American journal.[31] Einstein later commented that had he known of
Gibbs' work, he would "not have published those papers at all, but confined myself
to the treatment of some few points [that were distinct]."[32] All of statistical
mechanics and the laws of heat, gas, and entropy took the existence of atoms as a
necessary postulate.

Discovery of subatomic particles

Main articles: Electron and Plum pudding model

The cathode rays (blue) were emitted from the cathode, sharpened to a beam by the
slits, then deflected as they passed between the two electrified plates.
Atoms were thought to be the smallest possible division of matter until 1897 when
J. J. Thomson discovered the electron through his work on cathode rays.[33]

A Crookes tube is a sealed glass container in which two electrodes are separated by
a vacuum. When a voltage is applied across the electrodes, cathode rays are
generated, creating a glowing patch where they strike the glass at the opposite end
of the tube. Through experimentation, Thomson discovered that the rays could be
deflected by an electric field (in addition to magnetic fields, which was already
known). He concluded that these rays, rather than being a form of light, were
composed of very light negatively charged particles. Thomson called these
"corpuscles", but other scientists called them electrons, following an 1894
suggestion by George Johnstone Stoney for naming the basic unit of electrical
charge.[34] He measured the mass-to-charge ratio and discovered it was 1800 times
smaller than that of hydrogen, the smallest atom. These corpuscles were a particle
unlike any other previously known.

Thomson suggested that atoms were divisible, and that the corpuscles were their
building blocks.[35] To explain the overall neutral charge of the atom, he proposed
that the corpuscles were distributed in a uniform sea of positive charge.[36] This
became known as the plum pudding model as the electrons were embedded in the
positive charge like bits of fruit in a dried-fruit pudding, though Thomson thought
the electrons moved about within the atom.[37]

Discovery of the nucleus

Main article: Geiger–Marsden experiments

The Geiger–Marsden experiment

Left: Expected results: alpha particles passing through the plum pudding model of
the atom with negligible deflection.
Right: Observed results: a small portion of the particles were deflected by the
concentrated positive charge of the nucleus.
Thomson's plum pudding model was disproved in 1909 by one of his former students,
Ernest Rutherford, who discovered that most of the mass and positive charge of an
atom is concentrated in a very small fraction of its volume, which he assumed to be
at the very center.

Ernest Rutherford and his colleagues Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden came to have
doubts about the Thomson model after they encountered difficulties when they tried
to build an instrument to measure the charge-to-mass ratio of alpha particles
(these are positively-charged particles emitted by certain radioactive substances
such as radium). The alpha particles were being scattered by the air in the
detection chamber, which made the measurements unreliable. Thomson had encountered
a similar problem in his work on cathode rays, which he solved by creating a near-
perfect vacuum in his instruments. Rutherford didn't think he'd run into this same
problem because alpha particles are much heavier than electrons. According to
Thomson's model of the atom, the positive charge in the atom is not concentrated
enough to produce an electric field strong enough to deflect an alpha particle, and
the electrons are so lightweight they should be pushed aside effortlessly by the
much heavier alpha particles. Yet there was scattering, so Rutherford and his
colleagues decided to investigate this scattering carefully.[38]

Between 1908 and 1913, Rutherford and his colleagues performed a series of
experiments in which they bombarded thin foils of metal with alpha particles. They
spotted alpha particles being deflected by angles greater than 90°. To explain
this, Rutherford proposed that the positive charge of the atom is not distributed
throughout the atom's volume as Thomson believed, but is concentrated in a tiny
nucleus at the center. Only such an intense concentration of charge could produce
an electric field strong enough to deflect the alpha particles as observed.[38]
Rutherford's model is sometimes called the "planetary model".[39] However, Hantaro
Nagaoka was quoted by Rutherford as the first to suggest a planetary atom in 1904.
[40] And planetary models had been suggested as early as 1897 such as the one by
Joseph Larmor.[41] Probably the earliest solar system model was found in an
unpublished note by Ludwig August Colding in 1854 whose idea was that atoms were
analogous to planetary systems that rotate and cause magnetic polarity.[42]

First steps toward a quantum physical model of the atom

Main article: Bohr model
The planetary model of the atom had two significant shortcomings. The first is
that, unlike planets orbiting a sun, electrons are charged particles. An
accelerating electric charge is known to emit electromagnetic waves according to
the Larmor formula in classical electromagnetism. An orbiting charge should
steadily lose energy and spiral toward the nucleus, colliding with it in a small
fraction of a second. The second problem was that the planetary model could not
explain the highly peaked emission and absorption spectra of atoms that were
observed.
The Bohr model of the atom
Quantum theory revolutionized physics at the beginning of the 20th century, when
Max Planck and Albert Einstein postulated that light energy is emitted or absorbed
in discrete amounts known as quanta (singular, quantum). This led to a series of
quantum atomic models such as the quantum model of Arthur Erich Haas in 1910 and
the 1912 John William Nicholson quantum atomic model that quantized angular
momentum as h/2π.[43][44] In 1913, Niels Bohr incorporated this idea into his Bohr
model of the atom, in which an electron could only orbit the nucleus in particular
circular orbits with fixed angular momentum and energy, its distance from the
nucleus (i.e., their radii) being proportional to its energy.[45] Under this model
an electron could not spiral into the nucleus because it could not lose energy in a
continuous manner; instead, it could only make instantaneous "quantum leaps"
between the fixed energy levels.[45] When this occurred, light was emitted or
absorbed at a frequency proportional to the change in energy (hence the absorption
and emission of light in discrete spectra).[45]

Bohr's model was not perfect. It could only predict the spectral lines of hydrogen,
not those of multielectron atoms.[46] Worse still, it could not even account for
all features of the hydrogen spectrum: as spectrographic technology improved, it
was discovered that applying a magnetic field caused spectral lines to multiply in
a way that Bohr's model couldn't explain. In 1916, Arnold Sommerfeld added
elliptical orbits to the Bohr model to explain the extra emission lines, but this
made the model very difficult to use, and it still couldn't explain more complex
atoms.[47][48]

Discovery of isotopes
Main article: Isotope
While experimenting with the products of radioactive decay, in 1913 radiochemist
Frederick Soddy discovered that there appeared to be more than one variety of some
elements.[49] The term isotope was coined by Margaret Todd as a suitable name for
these varieties.[50]

That same year, J. J. Thomson conducted an experiment in which he channeled a

stream of neon ions through magnetic and electric fields, striking a photographic
plate at the other end. He observed two glowing patches on the plate, which
suggested two different deflection trajectories. Thomson concluded this was because
some of the neon ions had a different mass.[51] The nature of this differing mass
would later be explained by the discovery of neutrons in 1932: all atoms of the
same element contain the same number of protons, while different isotopes have
different numbers of neutrons.[52]

Discovery of nuclear particles

Main articles: Atomic nucleus and Discovery of the neutron
In 1917 Rutherford bombarded nitrogen gas with alpha particles and observed
hydrogen nuclei being emitted from the gas (Rutherford recognized these, because he
had previously obtained them bombarding hydrogen with alpha particles, and
observing hydrogen nuclei in the products). Rutherford concluded that the hydrogen
nuclei emerged from the nuclei of the nitrogen atoms themselves (in effect, he had
split a nitrogen).[53]

From his own work and the work of his students Bohr and Henry Moseley, Rutherford
knew that the positive charge of any atom could always be equated to that of an
integer number of hydrogen nuclei. This, coupled with the atomic mass of many
elements being roughly equivalent to an integer number of hydrogen atoms - then
assumed to be the lightest particles - led him to conclude that hydrogen nuclei
were singular particles and a basic constituent of all atomic nuclei. He named such
particles protons. Further experimentation by Rutherford found that the nuclear
mass of most atoms exceeded that of the protons it possessed; he speculated that
this surplus mass was composed of previously-unknown neutrally charged particles,
which were tentatively dubbed "neutrons".

In 1928, Walter Bothe observed that beryllium emitted a highly penetrating,

electrically neutral radiation when bombarded with alpha particles. It was later
discovered that this radiation could knock hydrogen atoms out of paraffin wax.
Initially it was thought to be high-energy gamma radiation, since gamma radiation
had a similar effect on electrons in metals, but James Chadwick found that the
ionization effect was too strong for it to be due to electromagnetic radiation, so
long as energy and momentum were conserved in the interaction. In 1932, Chadwick
exposed various elements, such as hydrogen and nitrogen, to the mysterious
"beryllium radiation", and by measuring the energies of the recoiling charged
particles, he deduced that the radiation was actually composed of electrically
neutral particles which could not be massless like the gamma ray, but instead were
required to have a mass similar to that of a proton. Chadwick now claimed these
particles as Rutherford's neutrons.[54] For his discovery of the neutron, Chadwick
received the Nobel Prize in 1935.[55]

Quantum physical models of the atom

Main article: Atomic orbital

The five filled atomic orbitals of a neon atom separated and arranged in order of
increasing energy from left to right, with the last three orbitals being equal in
energy. Each orbital holds up to two electrons, which most probably exist in the
zones represented by the colored bubbles. Each electron is equally present in both
orbital zones, shown here by color only to highlight the different wave phase.
In 1924, Louis de Broglie proposed that all moving particles—particularly subatomic
particles such as electrons—exhibit a degree of wave-like behavior. Erwin
Schrödinger, fascinated by this idea, explored whether or not the movement of an
electron in an atom could be better explained as a wave rather than as a particle.
Schrödinger's equation, published in 1926,[56] describes an electron as a wave
function instead of as a point particle. This approach elegantly predicted many of
the spectral phenomena that Bohr's model failed to explain. Although this concept
was mathematically convenient, it was difficult to visualize, and faced opposition.
[57] One of its critics, Max Born, proposed instead that Schrödinger's wave
function did not describe the physical extent of an electron (like a charge
distribution in classical electromagnetism), but rather gave the probability that
an electron would, when measured, be found at a particular point.[58] This
reconciled the ideas of wave-like and particle-like electrons: the behavior of an
electron, or of any other subatomic entity, has both wave-like and particle-like
aspects, and whether one aspect or the other is more apparent depends upon the
situation.[59]

A consequence of describing electrons as waveforms is that it is mathematically

impossible to simultaneously derive the position and momentum of an electron. This
became known as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle after the theoretical
physicist Werner Heisenberg, who first published a version of it in 1927.[60]
(Heisenberg analyzed a thought experiment where one attempts to measure an
electron's position and momentum simultaneously. However, Heisenberg did not give
precise mathematical definitions of what the "uncertainty" in these measurements
meant. The precise mathematical statement of the position-momentum uncertainty
principle is due to Earle Hesse Kennard, Wolfgang Pauli, and Hermann Weyl.[61][62])
This invalidated Bohr's model, with its neat, clearly defined circular orbits. The
modern model of the atom describes the positions of electrons in an atom in terms
of probabilities. An electron can potentially be found at any distance from the
nucleus, but, depending on its energy level and angular momentum, exists more
frequently in certain regions around the nucleus than others; this pattern is
referred to as its atomic orbital. The orbitals come in a variety of shapes—sphere,
dumbbell, torus, etc.—with the nucleus in the middle.[63] The shapes of atomic
orbitals are found by solving the Schrödinger equation; however, analytic solutions
of the Schrödinger equation are known for very few relatively simple model
Hamiltonians including the hydrogen atom and the dihydrogen cation. Even the helium
atom—which contains just two electrons—has defied all attempts at a fully analytic
treatment.[64][65][66]

See also
icon Physics portal
Spectroscopy
History of molecular theory
Timeline of chemical element discoveries
Introduction to quantum mechanics
Kinetic theory of gases
Atomism
The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory
Footnotes
^ Pullman, Bernard (1998). The Atom in the History of Human Thought. Oxford,
England: Oxford University Press. pp. 31–33. ISBN 978-0-19-515040-7.
^ a b Kenny, Anthony (2004). Ancient Philosophy. A New History of Western
Philosophy. Vol. 1. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 26–28. ISBN 0-19-
875273-3.
^ a b c d e f g Pyle, Andrew (2010). "Atoms and Atomism". In Grafton, Anthony;
Most, Glenn W.; Settis, Salvatore (eds.). The Classical Tradition. Cambridge,
Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
pp. 103–104. ISBN 978-0-674-03572-0.
^ a b c d Cohen, Henri; Lefebvre, Claire, eds. (2017). Handbook of Categorization
in Cognitive Science (Second ed.). Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Elsevier. p. 427.
ISBN 978-0-08-101107-2.
^ "Welcome to CK-12 Foundation | CK-12 Foundation".
^ Berryman, Sylvia, "Democritus", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall
2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
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Bibliography
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History of the Concept Atom. Translated by Henry J. Koren. Dover Publications. ISBN
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Jean Perrin (1910) [1909]. Brownian Movement and Molecular Reality. Translated by
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Further reading
Charles Adolphe Wurtz (1881) The Atomic Theory, D. Appleton and Company, New York.
Alan J. Rocke (1984) Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century: From Dalton to
Cannizzaro, Ohio State University Press, Columbus (open access full text at
http://digital.case.edu/islandora/object/ksl%3Ax633gj985).
External links

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Atomism by S. Mark Cohen.
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