Everything You Need to Know About the Structure of the Atom
The history of the atom. The concept of the atom dates back to ancient Greece, when philosophers like Democritus and Leucippus postulated that matter was made up of indivisible, indestructible particles. Later, scientists like Robert Boyle and Antoine Lavoisier explored the properties of matter and laid the foundation for the modern understanding of the atom. In 1897, J.J. Thomson discovered the first subatomic particle, the electron. Which led to a new model of the atom called the "plum pudding model. After Thomson's discovery of the electron, scientists began to piece together a more accurate model of the atom. In 1911, Ernest Rutherford proposed the "nuclear model" of the atom, which stated that the positive charge of the atom was concentrated in a small, dense nucleus. Rutherford's model was a huge step forward, but it still had some problems. For example, it couldn't explain why the atom was stable, or why electrons didn't cr...