Atomic (Advanced periodic table of Elements and isotopes) (Atomic glossary)

The modern view of an atom has come from many fields of chemistry and physics. The idea of an atom came from ancient Greek science/philosophy and from the results of 18th and 19th century chemistry:

Concept of the Atom
From the ancient Greeks through today, we have pondered what ordinary matter is made of. To understand the problem, here is a simple demonstration from a book entitled "The Extraordinary Chemistry of Ordinary Things, 3rd Edition" by Carl H. Snyder:

  1. Take a pile of paper clips (all of the same size and color).
  2. Divide the pile into two equal piles.
  3. Divide each of the smaller piles into two equal piles.
  4. Repeat step 3 until you are down to a pile containing only one paper clip. That one paper clip still does the job of a paper clip (i.e., hold loose papers together).
  5. Now, take a pair of scissors and cut that one paper clip in half. Can half of the paper clip do the same job as the single paper clip?
If you do the same thing with any element, you will reach an indivisible part that has the same properties of the element, like the single paper clip. This indivisible part is called an atom.

The idea of the atom was first devised by Democritus in 530 B.C. In 1808, an English school teacher and scientist named John Dalton proposed the modern atomic theory. Modern atomic theory simply states the following:

Dalton's atomic theory formed the groundwork of chemistry at that time. Dalton envisioned atoms as tiny spheres with hooks on them. With these hooks, one atom could combine with another in definite proportions. But some elements could combine to make different compounds (e.g., hydrogen + oxygen could make water or hydrogen peroxide). So, he could not say anything about the numbers of each atom in the molecules of specific substances. Did water have one oxygen with one hydrogen or one oxygen with two hydrogens? This point was resolved when chemists figured out how to weigh atoms.

How Much Do Atoms Weigh?
The ability to weigh atoms came about by an observation from an Italian chemist named Amadeo Avogadro. Avogadro was working with gases (nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine) and noticed that when temperature and pressure was the same, these gases combined in definite volume ratios. For example:

Avogadro said that at the same temperature and pressure, equal volumes of the gases had the same number of molecules. So, by weighing the volumes of gases, he could determine the ratios of atomic masses. For example, a liter of oxygen weighed 16 times more than a liter of hydrogen, so an atom of oxygen must be 16 times the mass of an atom of hydrogen. Work of this type resulted in a relative mass scale for elements in which all of the elements related to carbon (chosen as the standard -12). Once the relative mass scale was made, later experiments were able to relate the mass in grams of a substance to the number of atoms and an atomic mass unit (amu) was found; 1 amu or Dalton is equal to 1.66 x 10-24 grams.

At this time, chemists knew the atomic masses of elements and their chemical properties, and an astonishing phenomenon jumped out at them!

Fission and Fusion

Nuclear bombs involve the forces, strong and weak, that hold the nucleus of an atom together, especially atoms with unstable nuclei. There are two basic ways (splitting/binding) that nuclear energy can be released from an atom: