Greek Era Article (B.C.) What's the newest proposal of chemistry in today's word? The atom. Democritus is back with more ideas in the field of chemistry, announced just yesterday in Abdera, Thrace, Greece. He has reasoned that the most minimal, indestructible particle of matter is the atom. He has created a mental image of it, and has proposed the fact that it is a solid amount of matter which reacts mechanically with others just like it. Democritus also predicts that further research will be carried out on this matter in the future. Discoveries from 1800-1900 Since it has recently been discovered by Ernest Rutherford that radiation contains alpha, beta, and gamma rays, our readers have requested a sort of walk down the memory lane of atomic discoveries until this point. If you are old enough, you may remember when John Dalton proposed his atomic theory, in 1803. He had said that elements consisted of atoms that were identical and had the same mass and that compounds were atoms from different elements combined together. Later, in 1896, Henri Becquerel dsicovered radiation, thus jumpstarting J.J. Thomson's discovery the following year. Thomson determined the positive and negative charges of atoms to be caused by electrons, using his "Plum Pudding Model" of the structure. Finally, it led to Rutherford's recent discovery of the components of radiation using a gold foil experiment. Discoveries of 1900 James Chadwick has recently discovered neutrons, as you probably know, and many throughout the world are thinking about how far the understanding of the atom has come, even in the 1900's. For example, Max Planck introduced his "Quantam Theory" in 1900, using apha particles as atomic bullets to test his theories. In 1922, Niels Bohr contributed to the understanding of atomic structure and function by experimenting with a liquid-drop model of the nucleus of an atom. He concluded that the outer orbit of an atom could hold more electrons than the inner orbit. As you can see, advancements are constantly being made to the world of science!