History Of The Atom Project printable pdf download

DUE DATE: _____________ Name: _________________________

History of the Atom Project

The atomic theory of matter is an excellent illustration of the process of science. Our understanding of the world around

us is reshaped and refined with each scientific experiment. The first recorded idea of the atom comes from the ancient

Greeks in the 400’s B.C. Over the millennia, scientific experimentation has added to our knowledge of the atom,

redefining what it is and what its structure is like. In this project, your goal will be to learn about some of the highlights

in the history of atomic theory to gain an appreciation of how we know what we know about atoms.

Step one of this process involves research. Listed below are 14 scientists who all contributed to our current

understanding of the atom. You need to find out who these people were and what they contributed to atomic theory.

Democritus

James Chadwick

Antoine Lavoisier

Max Planck

John Dalton

Albert Einstein

J. J. Thomson

Niels Bohr

Ernest Rutherford

Louis De Broglie

Robert Millikan

Erwin Schrodinger

Marie Curie

Werner Heisenberg

Questions to answer in your research

1) When did they live? Where did they live?

2) What new information did they contribute to the understanding of the atom?

3) How did they find this new information? (What experiments did they do?)

4) Interesting facts – other accomplishments, personal information, famous historical events at the time,etc.

Cite Your Sources!

You must hand in a bibliography with your project. This must be in proper works cited/bibliography format. (See the

example shown below.) There are lots of websites that can help you make a correctly formatted citation. One good one

Sample Citation (for an online source):

"A Science Odyssey: You Try It: Atom Builder." PBS. PBS, 1998. Web. 04 Nov. 2009.

Research Tips

Some of these scientists did experiments not related to atomic theory as well. If you search on the web

form information, you might include searches about history of atomic theory, or “Niels Bohr atomic

theory” to help get less broad results. You can of course get good information by searching each name as

well, but don’t forget to find out about contributions to atomic theory. Your textbook also has useful

information about some of these scientists.

Here are a few useful websites to get things going.

- scroll down to the bottom for links to scientists

History Of The Atom Project