Question

today the idea that all macroscopic matter in everyday life is made of atoms should be classified as

Answer 1

The idea that matter is made up of small elements called atoms was first prooved and mentioned in dalton's theory. The statements of dalton's theory are as follow :

1. Matter is made of tiny particles called atoms.
2. Atoms are indivisible (can't be broken into smaller particles). During a chemical reaction, atoms are rearranged, but they do not break apart, nor are they created or destroyed.
3. All atoms of a given element are identical in mass and other properties.
4. The atoms of different elements differ in mass and other properties.
5. Atoms of one element can combine with atoms of another element to form "compounds" - new, complex particles. In a given compound, however, the different types of atoms are always present in the same relative numbers

This theory was widely agreed . But the idea to define matter as the club of atoms was combined effort of many other peoples . This includes history as follow:

• 2,500 years ago, Democritus suggested that all matter in the universe was made up of tiny, indivisible, solid objects he called "atomos."
• Other Greek philosophers disliked Democritus' "atomos" theory because they felt it was illogical.
• Dalton used observations about the ratios in which elements will react to combine and The Law of Conservation of Mass to propose his Atomic Theory.

Thus, Idea that macroscopic element is made up of atom can be classified as Dalton's atomic theory.

Further experiments by different scientists , gave 4 more theory which were modification of their previous one's. These theories are :

J.J. Thomson's Theory

English physicist Joseph J. Thomson proposed the "plum pudding" theory of the divisible atom in 1904, after discovering electrons in 1897. His model postulated that atoms consist of a big positively-charged sphere studded with negatively charged electrons (he called them "corpuscles") like fruit in a plum pudding. He further hypothesized that the charge of the positive sphere's charge is equal to the negative charges of the electrons. Today we call the positive charged particles protons, and the negative ones electrons.

Rutherford's Hypothesis

British physicist Ernest Rutherford proposed a nuclear model of the atom, in which a nucleus exists, in 1911. He also discovered activity in this part, namely the movement of protons and electrons within the central part of the atom. He further postulated that the number of protons in an atom equals that of the electrons. He also hypothesized that more neutral particles exist. These have come to be known as neutrons.

Bohr's Theory

Danish physicist Niels Bohr proposed in 1913 a planetary model, in which electrons revolve about the nucleus just as the planets orbit the sun. While the electrons are in orbit, they have what Bohr termed "constant energy." When these particles absorb energy and transition into a higher orbit, Bohr's theory refers to them as "excited" electrons. When the electrons return to their original orbit, they give off this energy as electromagnetic radiation.

Einstein, Heisenberg and Quantum Mechanics

From decades of painstaking research from thousands of scientists, the current atomic theory builds on work done in the 1930s by Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg and others. As with the earlier theories, the atom consists of a central, heavy nucleus surrounded by a number of electrons. Unlike earlier theories that treated electrons, protons and other tiny particles as definite solid "lumps," modern quantum theory treats them as statistical "clouds;" oddly, you can measure their speed exactly, or their locations, but not both at the same time. Instead of electrons behaving as planets orbiting in well-behaved elliptical paths, they whirl around in fuzzy clouds of various shapes. Atoms, then become less like hard, precise billiard balls and more like springy, round sponges. And despite being "solid" matter, they can exhibit wavelike properties such as wave length and interference patterns.

Quark Theory

As scientists looked at atoms with increasingly more powerful instruments, they discovered that the protons and neutrons that made up the nucleus were in turn made of even smaller particles. In the 1960s, physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig called these particles "quarks," borrowing a word used in a James Joyce novel. Quarks come in varieties such as "up," "down," "top" and "bottom." Protons and neutrons are formed from bundles of three quarks each: "up," "down" and "up" and "down," "up" and "down," respectively.