Animated Atom Boy

Abstract

The concept of the atom dates back to the speculations of Democritus and other Ancient Greek philosophers, but it was only in modern times that atoms were shown to exist and physicists began to investigate their structure. Rutherford’s team in Manchester discovered the atomic nucleus and Rutherford proposed that atoms consist of a tiny positively charged nucleus surrounded by negatively charged orbiting electrons. Rutherford and his colleagues went on to discover the nucleus is composed of protons and neutrons. It is now possible to produce pictures of atoms using the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) invented by Binnig and Rohrer.