Historical Development of the Atomic Model The currently accepted model for the atom (called the Quantum

Mechanical Model) has undergone a long evolution that began in 400 B.C. with the Greek philosopher Democritus who first coined the name "atom" for the proposed smallest particle of matter. Early theories of the structure of matter were not based upon experiments. Through a period of many centuries the study of atoms was forgotten until the time of John Dalton. As scientists began to study the relationship between several physical phenomenon such as electricity, and magnetism they began to develop different models about atomic structure. The progress from his time to the present is documented below. Democritus (400 B.C.) - "by convention bitter, by convention sweet, but in reality atoms and void" Isaac Newton (1704) Newton proposed a mechanical universe with small solid masses in motion. John Dalton (1808) - Dalton's Atomic Theory began modern atomic theory. He proposed an "atomic theory" with spherical solid atoms based upon measurable properties of mass. The strength of Dalton's model was that it could explain known chemical laws: the Laws of Definite Proportions, Multiple Proportions, and Conservation of Mass. Dalton's model was known as the billiard ball model. Michael Faraday (1832) Faraday studied the effect of electricity on solutions, coined term "electrolysis" as a splitting of molecules with electricity, developed laws of electrolysis. Faraday himself was not a proponent of atomism. Plucker (1859) - Plucker built one of the first gas discharge tubes ("cathode ray tube") and studied the conduction of electricity by gases using the cathode ray tubes. He found that the walls of the glass tubes would fluoresce at low pressures and also that the luminescence was affected by a magnet.

Dmitri Mendeleev (1869) Mendeleev arranged elements into 7 groups with similar properties. He discovered that the properties of elements "were periodic functions of the their atomic weights". This became known as the Periodic Law. James Clerk Maxwell (1873) Maxwell proposed electric and magnetic fields filled the void. G.J. Stoney (1879) Stoney proposed that electricity was made of discrete negative particles he called electrons". Sir William Crookes (1879) Crookes discovered cathode rays had the following properties: travel in straight lines from the cathode; cause glass to fluoresce; impart a negative charge to objects they strike; are deflected by electric fields and magnets to suggest a negative charge; cause pinwheels in their path to spin indicating they have mass.

Goldstein (1886) - Goldstein used a cathode ray tube to study "canal rays" which had electrical and magnetic properties opposite of an electron (positive particles were also formed in discharge tubes). Roentgen (1895) - Roentgen observed that nearby chemicals glowed when he was using a cathode ray tube. Further experiments found very penetrating rays coming from the cathode ray tube that were not deflected by a magnetic

field. He named them "X-rays". X-rays are produced when high speed electrons from the cathode material strike the anode and are abruptly stopped. Becquerel (1896) - Becquerel discovered radioactivity when a uranium compound he had thrown into a drawer darkened a photographic film stored in the drawer. He discovered some chemicals spontaneously decompose and give off very pentrating rays. This discovery supported the idea of a divisible atom. J.J. Thomson (1897-1904) - Thomson determined the charge to mass ratio (e/m) of an electron equaled 1.759 x 108 C/g through experiments he did with gas discharge tubes. He suggested that cathode rays consist of negatively charged particles.

To this point scientists knew that a wide variety of cathode materials in ray tubes emitted electrons and that electrons were smaller in mass than hydrogen atoms. Thomson proposed his "Raisin Bun or Plum Pudding Model" of the atom. He thought the atom was made of a uniform sphere or "dough" of positive charge in which were embedded negative electrons or "raisins". Enough electrons in the dough would make the atom neutral. Thomson also studied "canal rays" and found they were associated with the proton H+. "Could anything at first sight seem more impractical than a body which is so small that its mass is an insignificant fraction of the mass of an atom of hydrogen? --which itself is so small that a crowd of these atoms equal in number to the population of the whole world would be too small to have been detected by any means then known to science." J.J. Thomson 1934 Ernest Rutherford (1898) Rutherford studied radiations emitted from uranium and thorium and named them alpha and beta. Marie Sklodowska Curie (1898) Curie studied uranium and thorium and called their spontaneous decay process "radioactivity". She and her husband Pierre also discovered the radioactive elements polonium and radium. Soddy (1900) Soddy observed spontaneous disintegration of radioactive elements into variants he called "isotopes" or totally new elements, discovered "half-life", made initial calculations on energy released during decay. Max Planck (1901) - Planck was especially interested in the nature of radiation from hot materials. In 1901 he devised a theory that perfectly described the experimental evidence, but part of it was a radical new idea: energy did not flow in a steady continuum, but was delivered in discrete packets Planck later called quanta. That explained why, for example, a hot iron poker glows distinctly red and white. Planck studied the relationship between the energy of light and the frequency of light. The relationship that was eventually stated in the formula, E = h , where E is the energy of a quantum of light, h is Planck's constant, and is the frequency of light in the quantum. According to his theory each colour of light consists of a stream of quanta each with a specific frequency and a characteristic energy.

Rutherford and Soddy (1902) With Frederick Soddy at McGill University, Rutherford showed that elements such as uranium and thorium became different elements (i.e. transmuted) through the process of radioactive decay. At the time, such an incredible idea was not to be mentioned in polite company: it belonged to the realm of alchemy, not science. For this work, Rutherford won the 1908 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Particles named and characterized

by him include the alpha particle, beta particle and proton. Nagaoka (1903) - Nagaoka postulated a "Saturnian" model of the atom with flat rings of electrons revolving around a positively charged particle. Abegg (1904) - Abegg discovered that inert gases had a stable electron configuration that lead to their chemical inactivity Albert Einstein (1905) - Although Planck said that energy of matter is quantized, he continued to describe energy as travelling in the form of waves. Planck was unwilling to consider that energy might have particle-like properties. Einstein was prepared to make such a statement. Light, according to Einstein, is quantized. It occurs as quanta of electromagnetic energy that have particle-like properties. these "particle-like" packets were later called photons. In Einstein's view light and therefore all electromagnetic energy travels in the form of photons of energy. Light is emitted as photons of energy and absorbed as photons of energy. Einstein published the famous equation E= mc 2. Hans Geiger (1906) - Geiger developed an electrical device to "click" when hit with alpha particles. Robert Millikan (1909) - Millikan conducted his classic oil drop experiment to determine the charge (e=1.602 x 10-19 C) and the mass (m = 9.11 x 10 -28 g) of an electron.

Ernest Rutherford (1909) - In 1909, now at the University of Manchester, Rutherford was bombarding a thin gold foil with alpha particles when he noticed that although almost all of them went through the gold, one in eight thousand would "bounce" (i.e. scatter) back. The amazed Rutherford commented that it was "as if you fired a 15inch naval shell at a piece of tissue paper and the shell came right back and hit you." From this simple observation, Rutherford concluded that the atom's mass must be concentrated in a small positively-charged nucleus while the electrons inhabit the farthest reaches of the atom. He thought that the electrons surrounded the nucleus to make the atom neutral, but most of the volume of the atom was empty space. His model was called the Nuclear Atom model or Planetary Model because the electrons resemble planets in motion around a central body. There were criticisms of Rutherford's model; an atomic nucleus composed entirely of positive charges should fly apart. Furthermore, Rutherford's nuclear atom did not explain the total mass of the atom. An even more significant problem was that Rutherford's model contradicted the laws of nineteenth century physics. According to the physics of the time, an electron n motion around a central body must continuously give off radiation. Therefore, if Rutherford's model was correct, a continuous spectrum of light should be observed as the electron gives off radiation.

Niels Bohr (1913) - Bohr proposed a model for the hydrogen atom that accounted for the existence of the lines in the spectrum of hydrogen gas. He overcame the shortcomings of Rutherford's model by proposing that the energy of the electrons is quantized. He thought that the electrons orbit the nucleus like the planets around the sun, but that they could travel only in specific allowed orbits. To explain the energy jumps that an electron could take in moving from one allowed orbit to another Bohr devised an equation relating the energy positions of the single

electron in hydrogen to the wavelength of its spectral lines. Bohr's realization that the atom's energy is quantized and that electrons are restricted to specific energy levels was an astounding achievement. The model successfully predicted lines in the emission spectrum of hydrogen in the visible, ultraviolet and infrared regions. The one problem with Bohr's model was that it only explained one-electron systems. It could not explain the emission patterns produced by atoms or ions of two or more electrons.

H.G.J. Moseley (1914) - Moseley used x-ray tubes and determined the charges on the nuclei of most atoms. He wrote, "The atomic number of an element is equal to the number of protons in the nucleus". This work was used to reorganize the periodic table based upon atomic number instead of atomic mass. Aston (1919) Ashton discovered the existence of isotopes through the use of a mass spectrograph. Neils Bohr (1922) - Bohrs model explained the atomic structure that underlies regularities of the periodic table of elements. His atomic model had atoms built up of successive orbital shells of electrons. Louis de Broglie (1924) - By the early 1920's it was accepted that energy had matter-like properties. de Broglie suggested that matter had wave-like properties. Experimental evidence to support this was put forth in 1927 when researchers suggested that electrons had wave-like properties based on the diffraction patterns observed from streams of moving electrons. This was the beginning of the wave-particle duality of matter theory. These ideas supported Einstein. Erwin Schroedinger (1926) - Schroedinger used mathematics and statistics to combine de Broglie's idea of matter waves and Einstein's idea of quantized energy particles (photons). Schroedinger's mathematical equations and their interpretations, together with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, resulted in the birth of the field of quantum mechanics. Schroedinger used concepts from quantum mechanics to propose a new atomic model called the quantum mechanical model of the atom. This model describes atoms as having certain allowed quantities of energy because of wave-like properties of their electrons. He stated that an electron that is attracted to the nucleus can have only certain three dimensional wave patterns. He devised a wave equation to describe possible wave patterns of electrons. This wave equation contains variables (integers) called quantum numbers to describe the various electron orbitals. He described an orbital as a region of space where there is a high probability that an electron will be found.

Werner Heisenberg (1927) - The current model of the atom describes the volume of space surrounding the nucleus of the atom as being indistinct or cloud-like because of a scientific principle called the uncertainty principle. Using mathematics, Heisenberg showed that it is impossible to know both the position and the momentum of an electron at the same time. In 1927 he was puzzling over the basic quantum properties of electrons. He realized that the act of measuring an electron's properties by hitting it with gamma rays would alter the electron's behavior. Indeed, you

could measure the position of an electron (or other particle) OR you could measure its momentum. But the more precisely you measure one property, the more you throw the other off. He tied this up in an equation using Planck's constant, and called it the uncertainty principle. While many resisted this idea, it eventually became accepted as a fundamental law of nature. According to this principle, if you can know an electrons precise position and path around the nucleus, as you would by defining its orbit, you cannot know with certainty its velocity. Similarly, if you know its precise velocity, you cannot know with certainty its position. Based on the uncertainty principle, Bohr's atomic model is flawed because you cannot assign fixed paths (orbits) to the motion of the electrons. Cockcroft / Walton (1929) Cockcroft and Walton built an early linear accelerator and bombarded lithium with protons to produce alpha particles. Paul Dirac (1930) - Dirac proposed anti-particles. Anderson discovered the anti-electron (positron) in 1932 and Segre/Chamberlain detected the anti-proton in 1955. James Chadwick (1932) - Chadwick used alpha particles discovered a neutral atomic particle with a mass close to a proton. Thus was discovered the neutron. Lise Meitner, Hahn, Strassman (1938) - They conducted experiments verifying that heavy elements capture neutrons and form unstable products that undergo fission. This process ejects more neutrons continuing the fission chain reaction. Glenn Seaborg (1941-51) - Seaborg synthesized 6 transuranium elements and suggested a change in the layout of the periodic table. He suggested the lanthanide and actinide series should be removed form the main body of the periodic table Enrico Fermi (1942) - Fermi conducted the first controlled chain reaction releasing energy from the atoms nucleus. Murray Gell-Mann (1950s) - During the 1950s, discoveries of new subatomic particles were proliferating so quickly such that scientists spoke of a "particle zoo." Gell-Mann turned his attention to some particles that behaved particularly strangely. He proposed a new quantum property of particles he called the "strangeness number." While studying particles, he found even more general characteristics that allowed him to sort them into eight "families." He called this grouping the eightfold way, referring to Buddhist philosophy's eight attributes of right living. Then he found that the eightfold way could really best be explained by a particle, undiscovered as yet, that had three parts (hadrons), each holding a fraction of a charge. He called them "quarks" with a nod to James Joyce, whose novel Finnegan's Wake contains the passage: "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" Fractional charge seemed an outrageous suggestion at first, but proof came for his theoretical quarks in 1974.