Sept 21st: Lessons 6&7

Lesson 6:

Democritus was a rich man who used his money to travel and learn about science. He lived around 400 years before Christ. He was called the laughing philosopher because he often laughed at other people’s ideas. There is even a famous painting of him laughing.  He came to learn about atoms from a friend who he met on his journey named Leucippus (Lee-Sip-us). He thought atoms were tiny particles that made up everything. He was right! When you are far away from a beach, it looks like one large piece of land. But when you are up close to a beach, you can see all the tiny pieces of sand that make it up. These tiny pieces are called atoms. Democritus thought atoms make up everything, and that if you magnify things enough, you’ll be able to see the atoms. One lesson here is that just because you can’t see things doesn’t mean they’re not there. 

Lesson 7:

Atoms are groups of molecules. When atoms group together they make a molecule. The word indivisible means not able to be broken down. Democratis thought that atoms they were the smallest piece of a thing. He For example, he would have thought that if you chopped up salt into it’s tiniest pieces, they would be salt atoms. He also thought that atoms resembled the thing that they made up. For example, he thought that iron atoms were hard with little hooks that made them attach to each other so that it would be hard to break them apart. He thought water atoms were flat and smooth like stones that would slip. He thought that salt was sharp and pointy which made it taste sharp. We now know that atoms can be decomposed, which means they can be taken apart, and that they’re usually made up of different types of ions.