ATOMIC THEORY OF MATTER HOW TO

Because the atoms carry the mass, and because the atoms are conserved, the mass is conserved.ĭalton’s Atomic Theory can also be used to explain the Law of Definite Proportions.

In Dalton's view, chemical reactions involve a rearrangement of the atoms, but the atoms themselves are conserved. Compounds are composed of combinations of atoms of two or more elements with the atoms combining in a specific ratio with respect to the number of atoms of each element.ĭalton’s Atomic Theory can be used to explain the Law of Conservation of Mass. Chemical reactions involve the separation and combination of atoms, but the atoms themselves are never created, destroyed, or even changed.Ĥ. (It was later found that isotopes of the same element can have atoms with different masses.)ģ. Atoms of the same element have the same mass, and atoms of different elements have different masses. Elements are composed of tiny, indivisible particles of matter called atoms.Ģ. With help from other scientists, in the early 19th century, John Dalton developed a theory that can be used to explain the Law of Conservation of Mass and the Law of Definite Proportions.

ATOMIC THEORY OF MATTER HOW TO

The importance of these laws for us is that they provided 19th and 20th century scientists with the challenge of how to explain them. (The modern version qualifies this a bit.) The second scientific law that concerns us is the Law of Definite Proportions (or Constant Composition) that states that a specific compound always contains the same elements in the same definite proportions by mass. The first scientific law that affected the development of atomic theory is the Law of Conservation of Mass (or Matter) that states that matter and thus mass are neither created nor destroyed in the process of normal chemical reactions. One way to distinguish between scientific laws and scientific theories is that scientific laws describe what happens, and scientific theories explain why things happen.

Scientific Laws are general statements about nature that are based on repeated experiments or observations. Our story starts with two of the scientific laws suggested in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The purpose of this webpage is supplement what I did in the text by describing this history. When I was writing my text, I decided that I wanted to devote more time and space to describing the modern model of the atom instead of including the traditional description of the historical development of atomic theory.

Atomic theory of matter