1) Who were the main characters in the development of the atom? Why were they vital to the development of the atom? What made them different if anything?

Democritus: Democritus was from Greece and stated that all matter is made up of atoms. He also stated that atoms are invisible, everlasting, and diminutive that they can’t be divided.

John Dalton: He was from England in the early 1800’s. Dalton formulated the atomic theory, which states that all matter is composed of tiny, indestructible particles called atoms. He also stated that all atoms of a like element are alike and have the same atomic weight.

J.J Thomson: He was from England in the late 1800’s. Thomson was the discoverer of the electron and developed the “plum-pudding” model of the atom.

Ernest Rutherford: Rutherford was from England in the early 1900’s. He used the results of his “gold-foil” experiment to state that the mass of an atom was located in a small positively-charged sphere at the center of the atom.

Neils Bohr: He was from Denmark in early 1900. He stated that the electrons moved around the nucleus in large orbits. He also presented the Bohr atomic model which stated that atoms absorb and/or emit radiation only when the electrons abruptly jump between states.

Chadwick: He was from England in the early 1930’s. Chadwick discovered the neutrally-charged neutron.

Otto Hahn: Hahn was from Germany in the latter part of the 1930’s. He discovered nuclear fission, in which the nucleus of an atom breaks up into two separate nuclei. Hahn did this while he was experimenting with uranium.

2) Think about your lessons in history and discuss how the time period that they lived in determined the outcome of their discovery/ or how it influenced those individuals to be the names that we know today (aka did it matter where they grew up or if they had money?)

When and where they grew up and also how they lived determined the way that each scientist thought about things and saw things through their point of view. Some scientists took the work of their peers and added their own thoughts and ideas to the experiments. Other scientists uncovered new discoveries by simply being over curious about one particular subject.

3) Why do we consider the atomic theory still a theory?

-The atomic theory is still a theory because only some of it has been proven, and some of the theory has loopholes.

4) Why does it matter that we understand the structure of the atom?

-Everything in the world is made up of atoms. We need to know the basics of how atoms are structured so that we can understand and learn from the information we receive by working with them.