alnilam posted:

let's talk atoms

Atoms - you love em, you hate em, you can't live without em. Atoms probably exist, though they're mostly seen as a useful tool for accounting for mass in chemical reactions.

current understanding
Generally speaking, experiments suggest that they are neutrally charged, yet they contain electrons, which are negatively charged. So what the heck??
J J Thompson is our guy here. He has shown that the atom looks like what he calls "plum pudding" (yum lol) with a positively charged soup in which a certain number of electrons (the characteristic "atomic number" of the atom in fact!) are floating, with enough positive charge in the soup or pudding (gettin hungry over here lol) to balance out the electrons.

So, what are your thoughts on atomic theory?

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