John Dalton |
By Vee Stanek, Tyler Whittum & Maddie Wheeler |
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Biography: |
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| John Dalton was born on September 6th 1766 in Cumberland, England. John was the sonof a poor weaver, Joseph Dalton, and his wife, Deborah Greenup. John was educated by his father and a quaker teacher named John Fletcher. John's education cost him so much in fees that in about two years he quit and took up farming. john had learned some mathematics from a relative though, and in 1781 he went to be an assistant for his cousin George Bewley who ran a school in Kendral. John worked there for twelve years and in 1985, when his cousin retired, John became joint-manager. In 1793 John moved to Manchester and became a teacher of mathematiques and natural physics at Manchester College. Dalton arrived at his veiw of atomism by way of meteorology. He kept daily weather records from 1787 until his death. His first book was Meteorological Observations. Dalton also wrote a series of papers contaning his independent statement of Charles's law: "All elastic fluids expand the same quantity by heat." Dalton continued to study atomic weights from percentage compositions of compounds until he died in 1844. |
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Dalton (1804) |
1. elements composed of atoms, the smallest particle into which an element can be divided and still retain its identify as an element
2. atoms of the same element are identical in most ways
3. Atoms of different elements can combine only in certain ratios in forming compounds. For example the ratio of hydrogen (H) atoms to oxygen (O) atoms in the compound water is always (2 to 1) (essentially the law of constant composition Proust)
4. Chemical reactions involve the union separation or rearrangment of atoms.
5. Atoms of one element cannot be changed into atoms of another by chemical reactions.
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