John Dalton Research Paper

808 Words4 Pages

In the early 1800s, John Dalton discovered that all matter is made of atoms, and that atoms are indivisible and indestructible. Atoms are one of the most essential concepts for scientists to understand, because they explain how chemicals and elements act and react. Atoms help show what elements do when put in different circumstances and why they do that. An atom’s structure is based on its number of shells or periods. Those are the orbitals surrounding the atom where the electrons are. Atoms are made of electrons, protons, and neutrons, and the number of those depends on the element. The amount of electrons and protons depends on the element’s atomic number where the atomic number is equal to the number of protons, which is equal to the …show more content…

He experimented with apples cutting them until the pieces were so small that they were uncuttable. Once they were uncuttable, he called these pieces “Atomos” which is where the modern word atoms comes from. John Dalton was the first to fully discover and create the atomic theory in the 1800s. Four main theories John Dalton developed were 1) All matter is made of atoms. Atoms are indivisible and indestructible, 2) All atoms of a given element are identical in mass and properties, 3) Compounds are formed by a combination of two or more different kinds of atoms, and 4) A chemical reaction is a rearrangement of atoms. J. J. Johnson discovered the electron through the analogy of plum pudding, he compared negative electrons with plums floating around a positive atmosphere, the pudding. Lastly, Ernest Rutherford discovered atoms have nuclei around 1909-1911. He experimented with gold foil, he shot particles at a sheet of gold. Some of them were deflected, while most of them passed through. This caused Rutherford to conclude that the mass of an atom was at its …show more content…

Isotopes of the same element have the same amount of protons, but different amounts of neutrons. Different isotopes of the same element differ in atomic mass because of the change in number of neutrons, but still hold the same chemical properties. An ion is where an atom is missing or has extra electrons, which cause a net electric charge. Covalent bonding happens when two elements share electrons and become bonded together. The pairs of electrons are called “shared pairs” or “bonding pairs.” The stable balance of attractive and repulsive forces between atoms, when they share electrons, is known as covalent bonding. This only happens between atoms of the same or very similar elements. Ionic bonding is the transfer of valence electrons between atoms. This chemical bond produces two oppositely charged ions. Metal elements lose electrons to become a positively charged cation whereas nonmetal elements let the electrons in to become a negatively charged