Scientists of Atomic Structure

Wilhelm Rntgen (1845-1923)

German physicist who discovered X-rays in 1895 after observing that a sheet of
paper coated with barium platinocyanide glowed when a cathode ray tube (CRT)
was turned on. (A CRT is a high-vacuum tube in which cathode rays produce a
luminous image on a fluorescent screen, used chiefly in televisions and computer
terminals.) X-rays are electromagnetic radiation of high energy that is able to pass
through many materials opaque to visible light. He received the first Nobel Prize in
physics in 1901.
Henri Becquerel (1852-1908)
French physicist who, in 1896, while investigating fluorescence in uranium salts,
accidentally discovered radioactivity, the spontaneous emission of radiation by a
material. Later, Becquerel demonstrated that the radiation emitted by uranium
shared certain characteristics with X rays but, unlike X rays, could be deflected by a
magnetic field and therefore must consist of charged particles. The full impact of
Becquerel's discovery was not appreciated, however, until the work of Marie and
Pierre Curie, with whom he shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics.
Sir Joseph John Thomson (1856-1940)
English physicist who conducted a series of experiments on cathode rays. He
observed that the beam of light in the cathode ray tube is attracted to a positive
charge and repelled by a negative charge. In 1897 he concluded that the rays
consist of a stream of small, negatively charged particles that have a mass less than
one thousandth that of a hydrogen atom. Thomson has discovered the electron.
From this point onward, it becomes increasingly clear that atoms are not
fundamental particles, but in fact are made up of smaller particles. He received the
Nobel Prize in physics in 1906.
Max Planck (1858-1947)
German physicist who formulated an equation describing the blackbody spectrum in
1900. Planck's spectrum was obtained by postulating that energy was directly
proportional to frequency, E = h . Planck believed that this quantization applied
only to the absorption and emission of energy by matter, not to electromagnetic
waves themselves. However, it turned out to be much more general than he could
have imagined. Planck received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1918 for his quantum
theory after it was successfully applied to the photoelectric effect by Einstein and
the atom by Niels Bohr.
Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937)
English physicist born in Nelson, New Zealand. In 1906, his students Geiger and
Marsden conducted the classic gold foil alpha particle scattering experiment which
showed large deflections for a small fraction of incident particles. This led
Rutherford to propose that the atom was "nuclear." For his discoveries, Rutherford
was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Rutherford suggested the
fundamental positively charged particle, which he called the proton in 1914.
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Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

Danish physicist who proposed a successful quantum model of the atom in 1913.
His model assumed that (1) the electron exists at precise distances from the
nucleus, (2) as long as an electron remains in one location, no energy is given off,
(3) electrons have circular orbits (this is only correct for s orbitals), and (4) the
angular momenta associated with allowed electron motion are integral multiples of
h/2. Awarded Nobel Prize in physics, 1922.
Erwin Schrdinger (1887-1961)
Austrian physicist who invented wave mechanics in 1926. Wave mechanics was an
independent formulation of quantum mechanics to Heisenberg's matrix mechanics.
Like matrix mechanics, wave mechanics mathematically described the behavior of
electrons and atoms. The central equation of wave mechanics, now known as the
Schrdinger equation, turned out to be much simpler for physicists to solve in most
cases. Awarded Nobel Prize in physics, 1933.
Louis de Broglie (1892-1987)
French physicist who proposed the duality principle in 1923, which states that all
particles have wave-like properties and may be summarized by the equation:

= h/mv

where is the wavelength, h is Planck's constant, m is mass and v is velocity. De

Broglie was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1929.
James Chadwick, (1891-1974)
English physicist who worked with Rutherford on the bombardment of elements with
alpha particles. In the 1920s, Rutherford and Chadwick attempted to find an
uncharged elementary particle, but failed. Then, Chadwick repeated the earlier
experiment of Bothe and Frdric and Irne Joliot-Curie by exposing beryllium to
alpha particles. The beryllium then gave off radiation which could eject protons from
paraffin. In 1932, Chadwick showed that a neutral particle beam was the only way
to interpret the ejection of protons. This amounted to the discovery of the neutron.
For this, he received the 1935 Nobel Prize in physics.
Reference Web Page: Eric Weisstein's World of Scientific Biography
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography

The five filled atomic orbitals of a neon atom separated and arranged in order of increasing
energy from left to right, with the last three orbitals being equal in energy. Each orbital holds up
to two electrons, which most probably exist in the zones represented by the colored bubbles.
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Each electron is equally present in both orbital zones, shown here by color only to highlight the
different wave phase.

The Geiger-Marsden experiment

Left: Expected results: alpha particles passing through the plum pudding model of the atom with
negligible deflection.
Right: Observed results: a small portion of the particles were deflected by the concentrated
positive charge of the nucleus.

The cathode rays (blue) were emitted from the cathode, sharpened to a beam by the slits, then
deflected as they passed between the two electrified plates.

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Various atoms and molecules as depicted in John Dalton's A New System of Chemical
Philosophy (1808).

The current theoretical model of the atom involves a dense nucleus surrounded by a
probabilistic "cloud" of electrons

In chemistry and physics, atomic theory is a scientific theory of the nature of matter, which
states that matter is composed of discrete units called atoms. It began as a philosophical
concept in ancient Greece and entered the scientific mainstream in the early 19th century when
discoveries in the field of chemistry showed that matter did indeed behave as if it were made up
of atoms.
The word atom comes from the Ancient Greek adjective atomos, meaning "uncuttable".[1] 19th
century chemists began using the term in connection with the growing number of irreducible
chemical elements. While seemingly apropos, around the turn of the 20th century, through
various experiments with electromagnetism and radioactivity, physicists discovered that the socalled "uncuttable atom" was actually a conglomerate of various subatomic
particles (chiefly, electrons, protons and neutrons) which can exist separately from each other.
In fact, in certain extreme environments, such as neutron stars, extreme temperature and
pressure prevents atoms from existing at all. Since atoms were found to be divisible, physicists
later invented the term "elementary particles" to describe the "uncuttable", though not
indestructible, parts of an atom. The field of science which studies subatomic particles is particle
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physics, and it is in this field that physicists hope to discover the true fundamental nature of
matter.

History of ATOMISM
Philosophical atomism

The idea that matter is made up of discrete units is a very old one, appearing in many ancient
cultures such as Greece and India. However, these ideas were founded in philosophical and
theological reasoning rather than evidence and experimentation. As a result, their views on what
atoms look like and how they behave were very incorrect. They also could not convince
everybody, so atomism was but one of a number of competing theories on the nature of matter.
It was not until the 19th century that the idea was embraced and refined by scientists, as the
blossoming science of chemistry produced discoveries that only the concept of atoms could
explain

First evidence-based theory

Near the end of the 18th century, two laws about chemical reactions emerged without referring
to the notion of an atomic theory. The first was the law of conservation of mass, formulated
by Antoine Lavoisier in 1789, which states that the total mass in a chemical reaction remains
constant (that is, the reactants have the same mass as the products).The second was the law of
definite proportions. First proven by the French chemist Joseph Louis Proust in 1799, this law
states that if a compound is broken down into its constituent elements, then the masses of the
constituents will always have the same proportions, regardless of the quantity or source of the
original substance.
John Dalton studied and expanded upon this previous work and developed the law of multiple
proportions: if two elements can be combined to form a number of possible compounds, then
the ratios of the masses of the second element which combine with a fixed mass of the first
element will be ratios of small whole numbers. For example: Proust had studied tin oxides and
found that their masses were either 88.1% tin and 11.9% oxygen or 78.7% tin and 21.3%
oxygen (these were tin(II) oxide and tin dioxide respectively). Dalton noted from these
percentages that 100g of tin will combine either with 13.5g or 27g of oxygen; 13.5 and 27 form a
ratio of 1:2. Dalton found that an atomic theory of matter could elegantly explain this common
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pattern in chemistry. In the case of Proust's tin oxides, one tin atom will combine with either one
or two oxygen atoms.

Discovery of the nucleus

Main article: Rutherford model
Thomson's plum pudding model was disproved in 1909 by one of his former students, Ernest
Rutherford, who discovered that most of the mass and positive charge of an atom is
concentrated in a very small fraction of its volume, which he assumed to be at the very center.
In the GeigerMarsden experiment, Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden (colleagues of Rutherford
working at his behest) shot alpha particles at thin sheets of metal and measured their deflection
through the use of a fluorescent screen.[13] Given the very small mass of the electrons, the high
momentum of the alpha particles, and the low concentration of the positive charge of the plum
pudding model, the experimenters expected all the alpha particles to pass through the metal foil
without significant deflection. To their astonishment, a small fraction of the alpha particles
experienced heavy deflection. Rutherford concluded that the positive charge of the atom must
be concentrated in a very tiny volume to produce an electric field sufficiently intense to deflect
the alpha particles so strongly. This led Rutherford to propose a planetary model in which a
cloud of electrons surrounded a small, compact nucleus of positive charge. Only such a
concentration of charge could produce the electric field strong enough to cause the heavy
deflection.[14]
In 1917 Rutherford bombarded nitrogen gas with alpha particles and observed hydrogen nuclei
being emitted from the gas (Rutherford recognized these, because he had previously obtained
them bombarding hydrogen with alpha particles, and observing hydrogen nuclei in the
products). Rutherford concluded that the hydrogen nuclei emerged from the nuclei of the
nitrogen atoms themselves (in effect, he had split a nitrogen).[18] From his own work and the
work of his students Bohr and Henry Moseley, Rutherford knew that the positive charge of any
atom could always be equated to that of an integer number of hydrogen nuclei. This, coupled
with the atomic mass of many elements being roughly equivalent to an integer number of
hydrogen atoms - then assumed to be the lightest particles- led him to conclude that hydrogen
nuclei were singular particles and a basic constituent of all atomic nuclei. He named such
particles protons. Further experimentation by Rutherford found that the nuclear mass of most
atoms exceeded that of the protons it possessed; he speculated that this surplus mass was
composed of hitherto unknown neutrally charged particles, which were tentatively dubbed
"neutrons".
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Quantum physical models of the atom

Main article: Atomic orbital
In 1924, Louis de Broglie proposed that all moving particles particularly subatomic particles
such as electrons exhibit a degree of wave-like behavior. Erwin Schrdinger, fascinated by
this idea, explored whether or not the movement of an electron in an atom could be better
explained as a wave rather than as a particle. Schrdinger's equation, published in 1926,
[20] describes an electron as a wave function instead of as a point particle. This approach
elegantly predicted many of the spectral phenomena that Bohr's model failed to explain.
Although this concept was mathematically convenient, it was difficult to visualize, and faced
opposition.[21] One of its critics, Max Born, proposed instead that Schrdinger's wave function
described not the electron but rather all its possible states, and thus could be used to calculate
the probability of finding an electron at any given location around the nucleus.[22] This
reconciled the two opposing theories of particle versus wave electrons and the idea of wave
particle duality was introduced. This theory stated that the electron may exhibit the properties of
both a wave and a particle. For example, it can be refracted like a wave, and has mass like a
particle.[23]
A consequence of describing electrons as waveforms is that it is mathematically impossible to
simultaneously derive the position and momentum of an electron. This became known as the
Heisenbergun certainty principle after the theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg, who first
described it and published it in 1927.[24] This invalidated Bohr's model, with its neat, clearly
defined circular orbits. The modern model of the atom describes the positions of electrons in an
atom in terms of probabilities. An electron can potentially be found at any distance from the
nucleus, but, depending on its energy level, exists more frequently in certain regions around the
nucleus than others; this pattern is referred to as its atomic orbital. The orbitals come in a
variety of shapes-sphere, dumbbell, torus, etc.-with the nucleus in the middle.[25]

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_theory

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