Corpuscles to

Chemical
Atomic Theory
The Development of
Atomic Theory
Terms and Names:
 Robert Boyle - an Anglo-Irish
natural philosopher, chemist,
physicist, and inventor. Boyle is
largely regarded today as the first
modern chemist, and therefore
one of the founders of modern
chemistry, and one of the pioneers
of modern experimental scientific
method. 
 Corpuscles were “certain primitive and
simple, or perfectly unmingled bodies” that
were indivisible and whole. This went
against the Aristotelian thinking that
objects are made of infinitely divisible
elements. It was more like the idea of
Democritus and Leucippus.
 Chemical Element is a species of atom
 having the same number of protons in
their atomic nuclei (that is, the same 
atomic number, or Z).[1] For example, the
atomic number of oxygen is 8, so the
element oxygen describes all atoms which
have 8 protons.
Atomic Theory is a 
scientific theory of the nature of 
matter, which states that matter is
composed of discrete units called 
atoms.
Boyle’s empirical mindset slowly
gained ground. The practice of
performing experiments and
attempting to give possible
explanations to their results and
observations became more
widespread. Around 1789, a French
man named Antoine Lavoisier used
closed vessels and precise weight
measurements in many experiments
to achieve the following:
 He disproved the principle of phlogiston,
where heated metals were thought to
lose a substance of negative weight.
Metals, which gain weight when heated in
open air, actually react with oxygen air,
causing it to form a calx (metal oxide).
 He showed that air is not an element
because it could be separated into
several components. By looking at the air
from reacting metals and calces, he found
different “types” of air, one of which
caused burning to happen. Lavoisier
called it oxygen.
He showed that water is not an
element, because it was made of
two substances. Oxygen was found
to produce water when burned in
the presence of “flammable air” (a
part of air that would be later called
hydrogen).
 Lavoisier was able to refute Aristotle’s
thinking of a universe composed of three or
four elements. He had proof of Boyle’s
concept of a simple substance, now known as
the chemical element. A chemical element is
a substance that cannot be broken down into
simpler components. He defined a compound
as a substance composed of these elements.
He came up with an initial list of 33 elements,
and created a systematic way of naming
elements and the compounds they created.
He also wrote the first Chemistry textbook.
For this and many other contributions, he
became known as the Father of Chemistry.
This concept of the element allowed for another
great chemist, John Dalton (1766-1844), to
further develop the concept of the atom. His
Chemical Atomic Theory merged the concepts of
the atom and element, and formally established
the two in the practice of chemistry.
• Gases, and all chemically inseparable
elements, are made of atoms.
• The atoms of an element are identical in their
masses.
• Atoms of different elements have different
masses.
• Atoms combine in small, whole number ratios.
 Dalton proposed his atomic theory as the
best explanation to three important
observations made at the time. These three
observations were replicable results of
experiments done by different scientists.
Since we have enough evidence to establish
these observations as consistently occurring
under certain conditions of nature, they are
now known as laws, namely,
The 3 Fundamental Laws:
• Antoine Lavoisier’s Law of Conservation
of Mass
• Joseph Proust’s Law of Definite
Proportions
• John Dalton’s Law of Multiple Proportions
 The law of conservation of mass or
principle of mass conservation states that for
any system closed to all transfers of matter
and energy, the mass of the system must
remain constant over time, as system's mass
cannot change, so quantity can neither be
added nor be removed.
 The law of definite proportion,
sometimes called Proust's law or the law of
definite composition, or law of constant
composition states that a given chemical
compound always contains its component
elements in fixed ratio and does not depend
on its source and method of preparation.
The law of multiple proportions
states that: If two elements form
more than one compound between
them, then the ratios of the masses
of the second element which
combine with a fixed mass of the
first element will always be ratios of
small whole numbers.
 Highlight the developments in the way we
think about both atoms and elements as
a result of Dalton’s Chemical Atomic
Theory:
• that elements were made of the same
atoms and had properties unique to the
element, while chemical compounds were
made of different combined or
compounded atoms, and exhibited
different sets of properties.
• that one could compute the weights of
elements (and their atoms) by looking at
comparable amounts of the compounds
they formed.
• that one could compute atomic weights
compared to a reference. Dalton set the
atomic weight of hydrogen to 1 as this
reference. For this reason, the unit for atomic
weight was called the dalton for some time (it
is now called the AMU or atomic mass unit).

However, given the technology at the time,

the number of atoms in different compounds
was not known. For example, water was
known to be formed from hydrogen and
oxygen, but not in the ratio 2:1, so many
calculations of atomic weight were inaccurate.
Other scientists who made headway in the
concept of the element thanks to Dalton’s
theory:
• Joseph Gay-Lussac determined that
oxygen gas was made of 2 atoms of
oxygen and took the form of a molecule
instead of an atom. This offered the
possibility that an element wasn’t
necessarily made up of one atom, thus
distinguishing the atom from the molecule.
• Amedeo Avogadro (the man who
conceptualized the mole) determined
that equivalent volumes of two gases
under similar conditions contained
equal numbers of particles, and that
differences in their masses was a
result of a difference in their
molecular mass. Thus, he figured out
a reliable way of weighing atoms and
molecules. This was something
Dalton lacked in his theory.
• Later on, Dmitri Mendeleev published a
periodic table of elements that ordered
elements according to their atomic weights.
He noted patterns in their properties that
enabled him to predict the discovery of other
elements. His table became the basis of the
modern Periodic Table.

• Many other scientists in the 19th century

discovered more elements, thanks to Dalton’s
theory, Mendeleev’s table, and the advent of
improved analytical and decomposition
techniques. From Lavoisier’s 33 elements, the
century ended with 82.