Modern Atomic Theory


Neither Lavoisier or Proust were atomists. At the time, atomism was still unpopular, and most chemists felt it still lacked enough evidence. This changed when an English chemist named John Dalton found the connection between the law of conservation of matter, the law of definite proportions, and atomism. Dalton realized that the two new laws could both be explained through the existence of atoms.
If, he reasoned, each of the elements were made out of different types of unbreakable atoms, then elements combining to form compounds could be seen as atoms coming together to form molecules. This explains the law of definite proportions because one atom could come together with two atoms of another element, but not two and a half atoms. This also explains the law of conservation of mass, because if atoms were unbreakable, then there would be no way to destroy them, and one could only rearrange them into different compounds. After Dalton published his results, other chemists realized that atomism made sense, and it explained these recently discovered laws perfectly.

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