A-Tomos
A-tomos,
or by Democritos in-divisible. Really? When "yes", when
"no"?
"A-tomos" comes from
Greek philosopher, Democritus, and stays for a possible answer, if the matter
can be divided in an infinite manner or not.
Apart from being in-divisible, Democritus' atom had other features, like
movement, ability to form assemblies (we would
call them molecules today).
The concept of atom first gained its existence in chemistry
(chemical compounds are always formed in constant proportions - Dalton's law).
In Physics, at the beginning of XX century even Einstein dreamt about measuring
"real dimension of atoms" [1]. Perrin won Nobel
prize for a simple experiment with an oil drop.
But exactly at the same
time, so-called (now) nuclear radiation and
other components of atom, like electrons were
discovered. Half a century later it turned-out that even components of the
nucleus (proton, neutron) have smaller objects inside, called quarks.
So atom would be everything,
apart from being indivisible.
Unless we remember than in Modern Greek, a-tomos
means also a person, in-dividual.
This, human meaning brings back the original
idea of Deomocritus.
[1] Über die von molekularkinetichen Theori der
Wärma gefordert Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten
Teilchen, Annalen der Physik 17 (1905) 549-560 [About thermal movement of
the particles in non movemenent liquids on base of the molecular thermal theory]
The idea of this story came from Avv. Mario Fedrizzi