<IMG SRC="navi.gif" WIDTH=160 HEIGHT=440 usemap="#navi" BORDER=0> What Is Fundamental? : The Atom

Today we know that there is something more fundamental than earth, water, air, and fire...

By convention there is color,
By convention sweetness,
By convention bitterness,
But in reality there are atoms and space.

   -Democritus (c. 400 BCE)

Around 1900, people thought of atoms as permeable balls with bits of electric charge bouncing around inside.

But is the atom fundamental?

People soon realized that they could could categorize atoms into groups that shared similiar chemical properties (as in the Periodic Table of the Elements). This indicated that atoms were made up of simpler building blocks, and that it was these simpler building blocks in different combinations that determined which atoms had which chemical properties.

Moreover, experiments which "looked" into an atom using particle probes indicated that atoms had structure and were not just squishy balls. These experiments helped scientists determine that atoms have a tiny but dense, positive nucleus and a cloud of negative electrons (e-).

Trivia: The term "atom" is a misnomer. Why? [Answer]