The Atomic Model
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The Atomic Model
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Introduction to atoms
Everything is made up of atoms. Atoms are the smallest
unit of any element and cannot be seen.
Atoms of different elements can combine to make new
substances. Like this, we can make
all of the materials on the planet! electron shell
nucleus
Atoms have a unique structure.
They are made up of a core
nucleus which contains
protons and neutrons.
The nucleus is surrounded
by electrons which are in shells.
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Atomic zoom
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How big are atoms?
Atoms have a diameter of about 1 × 10–10 metres (m), or
0.1 nanometres (nm), which is far too small to be seen with
the naked eye.
Within atoms are smaller, subatomic particles called
neutrons, protons and electrons.
The nucleus, which
contains neutrons and
protons, is 1/10,000 the
size of the atom and has
a diameter of about
0.00001 nm.
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Size of particles
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Charge of atoms
Protons are positively charged. The number of protons an
atom has can be referred to as its atomic number. You can
see that on the periodic table, elements are arranged in
order of their atomic number.
proton
Neutrons are neutral and
electron
do not have a charge.
Electrons are
negatively charged. neutron
If the number of protons and electrons are the same, there
will be no overall charge for the atom. It is said to be neutral.
If we can’t see atoms, how do we know so much about them?
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The Atomic Model
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Who discovered the atom?
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John Dalton
John Dalton was an English chemist who lived in 19th century.
Dalton did a lot of scientific experiments involving gases.
His experiments led to him to think about what gases are
made up of.
The ancient Greeks had already come up with a theory that
everything is made of very small units, called atoms, which
cannot be broken down any further.
Dalton went on to do many experiments which showed that
when atoms of different elements combine to form chemical
compounds, they are always in whole numbers.
For example 2 oxygen atoms will
always react with 1 carbon atom
to make carbon dioxide, CO2.
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Dalton’s theory
Although there were some errors in Dalton’s work, which
were later corrected, most of his theory was correct.
Dalton theorised that:
elements are made of extremely small particles, called
atoms, so small in fact that we cannot see them
atoms of a given element are identical in size and mass,
and atoms of different elements differ in size and mass
atoms cannot be subdivided, created, or destroyed
atoms of different elements combine to form
chemical compounds.
Dalton also discovered colour blindness!
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JJ Thomson
At the end of the 19th century, English physicist Sir Joseph
John Thomson, carried out an experiment where he
passed a high voltage beam through a low pressure gas.
He found that the beam would always
be attracted to a positive charge, and
therefore must be negative itself.
He had discovered the electron!
Atoms were then thought to be solid,
indivisible spheres, but Thomson
found that the electron had a very
small mass. He thought that about
2,000 electrons must be needed to
make one hydrogen atom.
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Plum pudding model
A hydrogen atom made entirely of electrons would be
negatively charged. As this was not observed, he knew that
that could not be correct. positively-charged
pudding
Thomson then concluded that
negatively-
there must be fewer electrons, charged
which are spread out and plums
mixed with positive charges,
like plums in a pudding. This
new model of the atom was
therefore called the plum
pudding model.
Thomson’s work earned him the Nobel Prize in 1906.
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Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford was a student of JJ Thomson.
Rutherford designed an experiment to test out the
plum pudding model theory.
alpha particle
The experiment was conducted by his
assistants, Geiger and Marsden.
Geiger and Marsden fired gold
positively-charged alpha nucleus
particles at a sheet of gold
foil, which is made up of
gold atoms. They expected
the alpha particles to pass
through the gold atoms.
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Naming the proton
What actually happened in Rutherford’s scattering
experiment was that some of the alpha particles were
deflected and some were reflected straight back .
They concluded that, for
this to occur, there must be alpha
a small core of positive particle
charge that repels the
gold
alpha particles. They had nucleus
alpha particle
discovered the nucleus! deflected
Rutherford named the
positive charges “protons”,
from the Greek word
“protos” meaning “first”. Why is there no
deflection here?
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Nuclear model
New experimental evidence may lead to a scientific
model being changed or replaced. Rutherford’s scattering
experiment led to a new model of the atom.
Rutherford replaced the plum
pudding model with a new
model of the atom as a core
of positive charge in the
nucleus surrounded by
negatively-charged electrons.
He concluded that the nucleus
was very small.
This new model of the atom was called the nuclear model.
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Niels Bohr
In 1914, Danish scientist Niels Bohr further adapted the
nuclear model.
electron
Bohr suggested that electrons energy levels
are not just orbiting the nucleus (shells) electron
in a random fashion, but are in
fixed energy levels.
This can be compared to planets
orbiting the sun. They have a fixed
path that they follow, just like the
electrons around the nucleus. nucleus
Other scientists thought Bohr’s idea was unacceptable,
until later experimental data supported his claim.
Bohr won the Nobel prize for his work in 1922.
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Sir James Chadwick
A few years later in 1932, English physicist, James Chadwick
carried out a series of experiments involving radiation.
Chadwick discovered that the
nucleus not only contained
positively-charged protons,
but also small particles with
the same mass as protons
but no charge. He called
these particles neutrons.
Chadwick won the Nobel prize
in 1935 for his discovery.
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The Atomic Model
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Glossary
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True or false?
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Multiple-choice quiz
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