What was democritus experiments

Skip to main content. Atomic Structure. Search for:. Describe the discussion about matter. Describe the contribution Democritus made to our understanding of matter. What would the philosophers do? Figure 1.

Into how small of pieces can you divide a grain of sand? Figure 2. Summary Greek philosophers debated about many things. Aristotle and others believed that a grain of sand could be divided indefinitely. Democritus believed there was a lower limit to the dividing of a grain of sand. Esther Fleming May 31, Table of Contents.

Previous Article Does Wisconsin have summer? Next Article Is gold important to South Africa? F:Democritus advanced science by making many very important discoveries in the span of his lifetime but the greatest was that of the atom. Democritus experiment was he took a simple seashell and break it in half. So thus Democritus had discovered what he was the indivisible building block of life the atom.

In Dalton discovered that oxygen combined with either one or two volumes of nitric oxide in closed vessels over water and this pioneering observation of integral multiple proportions provided important experimental evidence for his incipient atomic ideas. John Dalton theorized that matter was made up of many tiny particles called atoms that had no parts. And he thought that atoms looked like Billiard Balls. The first part of his theory states that all matter is made of atoms, which are indivisible.

Democritus was a Greek philosopher who was the first person to use the term atom atomos: meaning indivisible. He thought that if you take a piece of matter and divide it and continue to divide it you will eventually come to a point where you could not divide it any more. Known as the 'laughing philosopher' because of the importance he placed on 'cheerfulness', Democritus was the first philosopher to posit that what we refer to as the 'Milky Way' was the light of stars reaching our perception and that the universe may in fact be a multi-verse with other planets sustaining life a theory.

To initially find the atom, Democritus conducted a simple experiment that can still be done today. What he did was take a simple seashell and break it in half. Democritus , c. The theory postulated a world made up of hard, indivisible hence atomic, from Greek atoma, "uncuttable" particles of matter moving through empty space. Dalton's atomic theory proposed that all matter was composed of atoms , indivisible and indestructible building blocks.

While all atoms of an element were identical, different elements had atoms of differing size and mass. Infer why it was hard for Democritus to defend his ideas. It was hard for Democritus to defend his ideas because no one could determine what held atoms together. It consisted of a spherically shaped atom composed of a uniformly distributed positive charge in which the individual negatively charged electrons resided. Democritus's ideas were rejected by other philosophers of his time because he could not answer or explain what held atoms together as he did not know.

All matter is composed of small particles called atoms. Atoms cannot be destroyed.