WHAT REALLY IS THE ATOM?
The word “atom”, used to describe the fundamental building block of matter – the fundamental block of which all bodies in the Universe are built of – was used around 2500 years ago by Leucippus and Democritus, in the ancient age.
In their language the word atom means indivisible – which means that the atom that Leucippus and Democritus thought of was a particle that could not be divided further.
In modern times (from the 19th century and onwards) natural scientists by proving that matter has particle-like properties, which means that by proving that bodies in nature are made of atoms; they simultaneously proved, even experimentally that the atom is divisible! After that, J. J. Thomson (1897) and E. Rutherford (1911) built a model for the structure of the atom.
Stop! Stop!
What does this mean? Science, after confirming the existence of the atom, divided it into smaller pieces? If Leucippus and Democritus could speak today, they would say: our atom is indivisible; don’t call a particle that can be divided further an atom.
And they would be right. Atom is what we should call particles without structure, particles that cannot be divided into two or more ingredients. So, the electron, the photon, the quark are the atoms of Leucippus and Democritus.
So, we can see that science doesn’t always follow clear logic when building the terminology with which it operates; instead it follows the practicality and tradition of naming things.
However even nowadays science defines the atom as the smallest constituent of something. Indeed, what we understand in nowadays science with atom is: an atom is the smallest constituent of matter that has the properties of a chemical element.
We can divide an atom which belongs to a chemical element, but then we don’t have the chemical element.
