What's the matter with ATOMS?!

ATOMIC MODELS

Since antiquity, humans have questioned how is matter made up.  Some 400 years before Christ, the Greek philosopher Democritus regarded the matter was made up of tiny particles that could not be divided into smaller ones. Therefore, these particles called atoms,  which in Greek means "indivisible." Atoms Democritus attributed to the qualities of being eternal, immutable and indivisible. 

However, the ideas of Democritus on the subject were not accepted by the philosophers of his time and had to spend about 2200 years for the idea of atoms was taken back into consideration. But let's go centuries later to see the most important atomic models that explore how matter is made up.

Begining with John Dalton, during the eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries scientists were investigating various aspects of chemical reactions, obtaining the so-called classical laws of chemistry. After that in 1808 dalton made his own atomic model. The image of the atom described by Dalton in his atomic model to explain these laws is that of tiny spherical particles, indivisible and unchangeable, equal to each other on each chemical element.

Years later, in 1897 JJ Thomson, and based on early models made certain experiments and said: HEY! , within the atoms are tiny particles with negative electric charge, which are called ELECTRONS, and that's why he thought that atom had to be a sphere of positively charged matter, within which the electrons were embedded.

But in 1911 E. Rutherford represented the atom as a miniature solar system in which the electrons moving like planets around the world. Also, a couple years later, Niels Bohr came with a new statement which quantized orbits to explain the stability of the atom.

 

Ultimately not to make a long story... in 1926 Erwin Schrödinger stablished the final atomic model, now known as the actual atomic model. He left the idea of precise orbits and replaced it by descriptions of the regions of space (called orbitals), where it is most likely that the electrons are.

So, that's everything for now, see you in the next post ;)!