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Period: 420 BCE to
History of the Atom
By Reuvim Pulber -
400 BCE
Democritus
Sorry for the inconvenience but the website does not allow long descriptions so I had to do it in a google doc. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VRsBZkkVj6NRsIt6CbZWEWlcmW-F26VpRFGYjTDn1h0/edit?usp=sharing -
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Max Planck
He was born on April 23, 1853, and died on October 4, 1947. He discovered that atoms and molecules emit or absorb energy in certain quantities olny. Most of what Max Planck did to come to his conclusion was theoretical and mathematical. He made a series of attempts to derive “Wien’s law” on the basis of the laws of thermodynamics. Some interesting facts about him are that his grandfather and great grandfather were all professors. He was also a gifted musician and composer. -
Joseph John Thomson
He was born on December 18th, 1856, in Cheetham Hill, England, and went on to attend Trinity College at Cambridge. He discovered the electron. He discovered the electron by using a cathode ray tube. He determined that cathode rays had a negative charge. An interesting fact about him was that he received a novel prize in physics for finding the electrons in 1906. -
Marie Curie
Born on 7 November 1867- 4 July 1934 Maria Salomea Sklodowska lived to be one of the greatest women scientists. She discovered 2 elements that are polonium and radium. These elements were very radioactive. She didn't discover radioactivity but she was one of the first to experiment with it. She extracted the uranium from the ore and found more activity in the leftover ore than the uranium and she named the elements she found polonium and radium. Her notebooks are still radioactive to this day. -
Robert Millikan
Robert Born March 22, 1868, Morrison, U.S. and died December 19, 1953, San Marino, California. He was an American experimental physicist. He discovered the elementary charge of electrons. He discovered this by doing the oil drop experiment, He would test and determine the size of the charge of an electron. He won a Nobel prize for his work on the photoelectric effect. -
Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford was born in 1871 and died in 1937. He lived in Canda, England, and Nelson of New Zealand. Ernest Rutherford discovered the nucleus and that atoms were not indestructible. He used gold foil which emitted radioactive waves proving there is a nucleus. An interesting fact about him is that he invented a receiver to detect radio waves. -
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was born March 14th, 1879 in Wurttemberg. He lived lots of his life in New Jersey, America. Einstein developed the theory of relativity in which it states of e=mc^2. This theory opened the eyes of the scientific community because it showed the relation between matter and energy. He used moving trains and flashes of lightning to explain his theory. He said he would be a musician if he didn’t become a physician. At one time he even had a bounty on his head. -
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr lived form 1885 to 1962. He lived in Copenhagen, Demark. There he invented the model of the atom. He proposed that energy levels of electrons are distinct and that the electrons revolve in stable orbits around the atomic nucleus but can jump from one energy level (or orbit) to another. The way that Bohr experimented was by drawing models and applying mathematical equations. One interesting thing about him is that his father was nominated for Nobel prizes three times in two years. -
Erwin Schrondinger
He was born on August 12, 1887, in Vienna, Austria and died January 4, 1961, Vienna. He formulated the wave equation for electron movements. He also created the quantum mechanical model of the atom. His model illustrates where the electron is unlike Bohrs which illustrates the path of the electron. He experimented with the atom model using mathematical equation to find an electron in a certain position. One interesting thing about him is that he escaped the Nazi party which he opposed. -
James Chadwick
James Chadwick was born in Cheshire, England, on 20th October 1891. He got his education at the University of Cambridge. After which he moved to Manchester England. He discovered the neutron in an atom. This discovery later contributed to him helping the Us make atomic bombs. The way he discovered the neutron was by bombarding beryllium atoms with alpha particles. This produced neutral radiation which meant there was a neutral particle in the atom which he named neutron. He was a POW in WWI. -
Louis De Broglie
He was born in 1892 and died in 1987. He lived in Dieppe France. He proposed the theory of electron waves. It stated that electrons have a wave property as well as a particle property. His theory was proven experimentally in 1927. He won the Albert I Moncao prize in 1932. -
Werner Heisenberg
He was born December 5, 1901, Würzburg, Germany—died February 1, 1976, Munich, West Germany. He invented the matrix mechanics, the first formalization of quantum mechanics in 1925. Heisenberg conducted thought experiments. He would do lots of thinking and mathematical equations. Something interesting about him is that he won a Nobel prize in 1932 in physics for the matrix mechanics.
