Atomic Theory
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Atomic Theory
Early Atomic Theory
The discovery of the atomic theory first started back in Ancient Greece. The idea of the existence of atoms first arrived through philosophy. If you have a pure block of copper and cut it in half and then in half again, you will be left with the smallest piece of copper. This small piece of copper would be known as an atom. This was then found out to be true for all elements. This is how the atomic theory was made. Because Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, did not accept the theory, it was ignored for centuries. John Dalton later revived interest in the atomic theory in the 18th century.
John Dalton
It was in the early 1800s that John Dalton, an observer of weather and discoverer of color blindness among other things, came up with his atomic theory. In an attempt to explain how and why elements would combine with one another in fixed ratios and sometimes also in multiples of those ratios, Dalton formulated his atomic theory...