LESSON 1.   Historical Perspective

Discovering different elements was easier than discovering how elements work.  Many earlier philosophers felt that if you understood how elements interact, you would discover how to create or destroy matter.  They were all looking for a way to create gold!  Greed and power by early kings was the initial drive behind experiments to create elements.  However, it was the beginning of the “atomic theory.”

Early philosophers from ancient India (6^th Century BC), Greece (5^th Century BC), and Rome (1^st Century BC) wrote about small particles that could not be divided.  Most of their discussions were an attempt to understand how matter forms and changes.  It was the Greek philosopher Democritus (470 – 380 B.C.), who used the term “atomos,” which means “indivisible,” to describe the existence of these fundamental particles.  However, there was no way to prove the existence of an “atom,” so there was not much interest for thousands of years.

Proving there were particles called “atoms” had to wait until the 1800’s, when experiments in chemistry became more systematic.  As in most science disciplines prior knowledge and experiments were needed to logically come to the conclusion that matter is composed of atomic and subatomic particles.  We cannot really “see” or “touch” these particles, even today.  Scientists make conclusion by collecting data and making theories to fit the data. There could be scientific experiments that might change how we describe subatomic particles.