The History of the Atom

(Editor's Note:  This is a guest post by my grandson Diesel Torkildson. It shows how the poetic gene carries down through the generations.)

To start off I'll go in order of date
> Democritus is the first name I'll state
> He said some matter was indivisible
> That you couldn't cut it infinitesimal
> He called those little particles Atomos
> Back when people believed in chronic
>
> Dalton John is the next name I'll put out
> He discovered atomic theory that's for sure
> He said all elements are made of atoms even if they're not pure
> Atoms are identical and can't be created or destroyed
> Those were the ideas he deployed
> He also created the sphere model
> Let's move on, let's not dawdle
>
> The cathode ray experiment was done by JJ Thomson
> He said there were particles smaller than an atom putting Dalton in a coffin
> He discovered the electron that's where an atom's negative charge comes from
> He passed cathode rays by positive and negative sides
> They went to the positive from the negative they hide
>
> Thompson knew that atoms were neutral
> So he said positive and negative came together mutual
> Plum pudding was what his model was called
> But Milikan's ideas will leave you appalled
>
> Milliken determined an electrons exact charge
> Because before it had been at large
> He used the oil drop experiment
> To discover that electrons mass and charge weren't variant
> He sprayed oil into a chamber giving them a negative charge
> Which was used to decrease the speed or enlarge
>
> Ernest Rutherford determined that atoms are mostly empty
> What he laid down was pretty hefty
> The gold foil experiment was his
 Now let's get right down to biz
He shot alpha particles at gold foil
Some went through some bounced back and others slid off like oil
In Rutherford's model he said
That there were protons in the middle and electrons on the outside but the middle was dead
His model was called the nuclear model
Now let's get Niles Bohr's ideas out of the bottle
He determined that electrons traveled in orbits
And the energy was increased in the outer forces
He made The model planetary
With the electrons floating around like fairies

James Chadwick discovered the neutron
Enough of that now let's MoveOn

Let's look at the trio of Louis de Brogilie, Warner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger
The quantum mechanical model they were the depositors
They said electrons were like waves and particles
And weren't in orbits not even partial
There are different shape energy levels
Now I bet they didn't teach you that at Beville!