~Democritus


 * //Democritus (460BCE-370BCE)//**

Country of Origin: Thrace, Greece Democritus was born into a very wealthy family in the country of Thrace. The wealth and fortunes he inherited from his father was spent on his travels and also on different ways to clench his thirst for more and more knowledge. He traveled all over to learn more about his culture and occupied much of his time at first with natural philosophy. He became a pupil of the great Leucippus from which he would later use ideas from to form his own theories. He was very much influenced by his teacher Leucippus especially in his theories on atoms.

Democritus, the “father of modern science,” expanded on the theory of atoms and void. He expanded on much of his teachers hypotheses that everything in nature and all matter is made up of atoms. He determined that atoms were too small to be seen by one’s senses and that they come together to form all materials. According to Democritus, atoms, which are eternal, determine the properties of the mass they make up and like his teacher; he determined that atoms were always in motion in space. Democritus stated that atoms could not be divided any further



Democritus formulated his theories surrounding the atom with the idea that the atom was a small, sperical, solid that was both indivisible and indestructable. His model of the atom was very basic compared to what it is today but it was a very important starting point. His model did not take into account the charged particles with it an atom or a nucleus but instead, he focused around the idea that an atom was the last part of "something" and could no longer be divided into smaller parts.

The **//small, spherical, solid, indivisible model//** as shown below does not have many characterisitics that are hard to grasp or understand. Democritus was limited to the technologies of his time and most of his ideas of the atom were not related to looking closely at it with a microscope. His model may seem too basic but it does have some qualities and traits that are still thought to make up an atom even today.



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