Άτομο - Atomo
Origin:
The Greek prefix ‘a’ meaning not, and temnein, to cut – so ‘Uncuttable, Indivisible.’
Story:
Coined by the philosopher Leucippus of Miletus and his pupil Democritus around 400 BC who believed that all matter could be reduced to small particles called Atoms, too small to be seen.
The big questions was, is a single atom of water still water or simply a component of water, unrecognisable as water. This differed from the theories of Plato and Aristotle who believed all things could be divided into Air, Earth, Fire and Water. Plato even wanted to burn all of Democritus’s books.
Revived as a concept by a 15th century alchemist and poet at the court of the English king Edward IV who mentioned it in one of his poetic works. As an idea it caught on in subsequent centuries and in 1803 John Dalton published his atomic theory and the periodic table.
The whole concept was superseded by subatomic research in the late 19th century, culminating in Rutherford discovering that atoms have an internal structure, namely Protons, Neutrons and Electrons.
Of course, nowadays we know that even protons and neutrons can be subdivided into Quarks and Gluons which are the smallest things physicists can measure - So far.
The word Quark by the way is totally made-up, allegedly by the nuclear physicists Murray Gell-Mann. He found the word in Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce who claimed he had heard the word on a visit to a German farmer’s market referring to curd cheese. Gell-mann suggested its actually meaning was the ‘cry of a gull’ and suggested perhaps it should be pronounced so that it rhymes with bark. Quarks exist in six flavours, grouped in pairs – namely ‘Up and Down,’ ‘Strange and Charm,’ and ‘Top and Bottom.’
See also:
Atomic, Platonic, Physics, Proton, Electron, Neutron
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