The Story of Dalton’s Atomic Theory

Once upon a time, there was John Dalton, an English scientist. He was the one that started all of this madness into chemistry – yes, you have all right to despise him. He formed an idea called Dalton’s Atomic Theory, the base of where all atomic structures came from.

Dalton’s Atomic Theory gives four main ideas to the field of chemistry:

1. Each element is composed of extremely small particles called atoms (indivisible and indestructible). As in, atoms are the smallest units.
2. All atoms of a given element are identical.
3. A chemical reaction involves only the separation, combination, or rearrangement of atoms. It does not result in their creation or destruction.
4. Atoms of different elements combine in whole number ratios to form compounds.

Now, this isn’t the rules we use today. Meaning, there must have been something wrong about this that required fixing. The crossed out parts of the above were proven incorrect over a period of time.

For rule #1, subatomic particles(protons, neutrons, electrons) were found within the atoms themselves. Therefore, atoms are not the smallest units.

For rule #2, isotopes, atoms from the same elements that were slightly different, were found. To be specific, they all have the same number of protons and the same chemical properties, but have different number of neutrons.