![]() It requires a capacity for deep, original and complex thought. The point is that Newton was able to make sense of the data - something that is in no way trivial. This seems like a pretty weird and rather over-blown assumption how does this “action at a distance” work? Yet, followed scientifically it appears to be quite powerful and remarkably accurate. So what would lead scientists to the unavoidable conclusion that matter is composed of discrete atoms? In fact, often a huge intuitive leap must be made to explain the results of scientific observations.įor example, the story about Isaac Newton (1643-1727) and the falling apple captures this truism, namely the remarkable assumption that the movement of the earth around the sun, the movement of the moon around the earth, and the falling of an apple to earth are all due to a common factor, the force of gravity, which acts at a distance and obeys an inverse square relationship (1/r 2, where ”r” is the distance between two objects). ![]() So the question arises, how did scientists in the nineteenth century eventually produce clear evidence for the existence of atoms? We have already said atoms are much too small to be seen by any direct method. The ideaof atoms was purely a product of imagination, and while there was vigorous debateabout the nature of matter, this debate could not be settled scientifically untilthere was objective evidence one way or another. It is important to note that from the time that the first ideas of atoms arose,and for thousands of years thereafter, there was not one iota of evidence forthe particulate nature of matter or the physical existence of atoms.
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