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No one has "seen" an atom in the normal sense of viewing it with your eyes, even with a powerful microscope.

If you broaden the meaning of the phase "see an atom" to include see images showing atoms, then there are some answers.

X-ray diffraction creates images that result from atoms but one actually sees is a set of dots on an X-ray detector which are positioned in a certain way because the bounce of atoms in a crystal. W.L.Bragg and his son W. H. Bragg were pioneers around 1900 in creating X-ray diffraction images from crystals.

Many other processes can be said to produce such indirect images of atoms, but in recent decades, particularly at the IBM, there has been progress with a different kind of microscope. First, there was the scanning tunneling microscope and then the atomic force microscope, both of which give detect small changes in the signal from a tiny needle that moves across the surface of an object. The motions can be controlled with such accuracy that the signal changes occurring at different positions can be attributed to different atoms with different properties at different positions. In this way, a kind of mapping of the surface that maps individual atoms can be accomplished and the resultant image of an area of surface allows one to pick out individual atoms. We can say then that we have a picture with individual atoms, so we can "see" them. The Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 was given for this work and shared by Ernst Ruska, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer.

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11y ago
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5mo ago

J.J. Thomson is often credited as the second person to discover the atom, by identifying the electron in 1897. This marked an important development in the understanding of atomic structure.

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11y ago

The first person to discover the atom was John Dalton in 1800.

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8y ago

Leucippus and Democritus have proposed intuitively the existence of atoms.

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12y ago
  • john dalton
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16y ago

Devin huckels

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14y ago

Radioactive Man.

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12y ago

John Tompson

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11y ago

Democritus?

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14y ago

Democritus

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Q: Who was the second person to discover the atom?
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Related questions

Who was the second person to discover Australia?

zheng he


What year did Aristotle discover the atom?

Aristotle did not discover the atom. The concept of the atom was first proposed by the ancient Greek philosopher Leucippus and his student Democritus around the 5th century BCE. Aristotle, who came after them, did not accept the idea of atoms and instead favored a different view of matter.


What method did Democritus's use to discover atoms?

None, he did not discover the atom. His idea of the atom was derived from Philosophical reasoning not Scientific methods and experiments.


What Dalton discover?

Dalton discovered the particles that make the atom and the atom itself


Did ernest discover the atom?

No. God did when he created it.


Who said the mass of an electron is about 12000 that of a hydrogen atom?

its not, its closer to about 1/1800 of a hydrogen atom, the English chemist john Dalton was the first person to discover relative atomic masses and use them properly.


What would happen to the current modal of the atom if new information about its is discover in the feature?

what would happen to the current modal of the atom if new information about its is discover in the feature


Did john Dalton discover anything new about the atom?

no


Who were the first people to discover the atom?

DEMOCRITIS!


Why did ernest Rutherford discover the atom?

Because he wanted to.


Who is the scienist that discover an atom?

miss Barbara Greenfield


When did Ernest Rutherford discover the nucleus of the atom?

in 1897