History In Science Class? WHAAAAAAAAAT?

     Hello my fellow people of the world! So as you might have read from my title, we are gonna have a little history mixed in with our science. (we are?!) Yeah didn't you guys read the title? (uh we were supposed to?) Yes, yes you were. But it doesn't matter! Anyways, what we will talk about is the history of atoms. First thing is who had the first idea about atoms. This dude's name was Democritus and he lived in like 2400 BC. Here is how he looked like: 



      So now we are going to get to know our dear friend Democritus. Let's call him Dem for short. HEYYYY DEM! Anyways, Dem was born  460 BC in Abdera, Thrace. No, I don't know where that is so don't ask. He did live in Greece though. Dem was one of the best Greek philosophers. Not much is known on his life though. He was also a mathematician, but he was known more for his tribute to science. SCIENCE NERDS RULE! Isn't that right Dem? 

haha you know it! 

      That was a little bit about Dem. Now let's get down to the science-ness of it all. Democritus asked, "What id you could keep cutting something forever?" His theory was that you can't keep cutting something forever, eventually you'd get to the smallest most tinniest piece which is impossible to cut anymore. He called that tiny piece "atomos" and he pictured it looked a little like this:

ignore the democritus part

      Well when he told all the other philosophers, they really didn't care. Dem was like, "Hey guys, I think that there's this thing called atoms which is the smallest particle of something!" And the other philosophers were like, "Yea that's cool and all but I'm gonna go listen to Aristotle." POOR DEM! And who was Aristotle you ask? He was the most well known philosopher of that time. He had a different theory. He thought that everything in the world was made up of water, earth, fire, air. He proved this by burning a log. The flames coming out was fire, the ash was the air, he used water to put it out, and the stuff left over was earth. And that simple little experiment was able to win everyone over. Here's a picture of Aristotle. 

      The sad thing is that poor Dem's idea didn't get recognized till 2,000 years later! Poor, poor Dem. But hey, at least it got recognized! If you want to learn the stuff that I didn't teach you then you can go here:
http://www.nndb.com/people/790/000087529/
http://atomictimeline.net/index.php
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/lec05.html

      Sadly, Dem's idea got ignored for 2,000 years! Man, Dem really isn't that lucky! Well at least it got recognized! Even if it took a long time. Well, I think you guys got the idea about the first atomic theory. Since you were all so good, I'll give you a video. Goodbye my fellow people of the world! Science Fun:)