This was a real question by my 6yo. She asked what was made of atoms. I said everything, but they’re too small to see. “Oh, microscopic!” “Well, smaller actually.” “How do people know they exist? And what’s the name of the person who discovered them?”
Marked as chemistry cause that’s how ill-equipped I am to answer this question. Is it chemistry? Or should I have said physics?
In: 4
We can’t see them directly but we have models that predict their behavior and we have experiments to test the model.
It’s like if I was in a pitch black room and I throw a basketball at the wall. I can’t see the wall but I’d expect the ball to bounce back if there is a wall.
No idea who discovered atoms though.
Early experiments in physics led to the precursor of the standard model
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherford_model
We can’t see them directly but we have models that predict their behavior and we have experiments to test the model.
It’s like if I was in a pitch black room and I throw a basketball at the wall. I can’t see the wall but I’d expect the ball to bounce back if there is a wall.
No idea who discovered atoms though.
We can’t see them directly but we have models that predict their behavior and we have experiments to test the model.
It’s like if I was in a pitch black room and I throw a basketball at the wall. I can’t see the wall but I’d expect the ball to bounce back if there is a wall.
No idea who discovered atoms though.
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Early experiments in physics led to the precursor of the standard model
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherford_model
Early experiments in physics led to the precursor of the standard model
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherford_model
[removed]
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The development of atomic theory goes back to a few Greek philosophers who proposed the idea that there were limits to physical division; at some point you couldn’t keep dividing something, and it would be ‘atomos’, meaning indivisible.
This idea was largely seen as ridiculous and most people ignored it for about 2000 years.
In the early 1800s, John Dalton (like other chemists of the time) was experimenting with various chemicals, and noted that particular combinations would always have the exact same weight ratios in their reactions. He theorised that they were discrete combinations occurring at vast scale, and called the units of these atoms, after the old Greek idea.
Further proof for atomic theory came from Robert Brown, who noticed in the 1820’s that tiny particles in water would jiggle for no reason. It took until Einstein in 1905 for a formal explanation to arise – they moved because the water was actually made from tiny particles that were bouncing around.
In short, we considered the evidence available and eventually concluded that all of it could be explained by the existence of atoms.
These days, we can actually image individual atoms with the use of electron microscopes.
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