NIELS BOHR

Danish physicist (7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) who won the Nobel Prize for his work concerning atomic structure (the parts that make up an atom) and radiation (the energy which, in the form of particles/waves, atoms emit). 

Bohr based his work on the theories of his professor Ernest Rutherford, considered the father of nuclear physics.  The result was a new model of the atom, which would serve as the basis for quantum mechanics.  

Bohr’s new model claimed that the notion of atoms as particles was not totally accurate.  According to his discovery, atoms were also waves, an assertion for which he was ridiculed at first.  Later, in addition to claiming that particles were also waves, Bohr stated that three elements were missing from the periodic table.  This caused his colleagues to ridicule him even more.  When the three elements were finally discovered, the wave-particle duality was universally accepted.

The Einsteinian paradox that matter is simply energy in another state increased with the possibility that the small particles that make up atoms could be waves and particles simultaneously.  It all depended on how you measured them.  If you were looking for a wave, you’d find a wave; if you were looking for a particle, you’d find a particle. Whether they were waves or particles was easy to determine.  The true mystery lies in the fact that if you try to measure a wave at a precise point, evidently what you find is a specific particle of the wave.    

QUANTUM MECHANICS

Around 1920, a group of physicists headed by Bohr were rewriting physics, which at that moment found itself in a strange and unexpected place.  Protons, neutrons and orbiting electrons were discovered as subatomic particles.  Until then, the smallest particle thought to exist was the atom.    

The theories of Maxwell and Einstein, not totally understood at that time (Einsteins the most), became obsolete, as they were incapable of describing the behavior of these tiny quantum particles.  A new approach was needed.

At the end of the 1920s, physicists unraveled the essence of what would come to be called quantum mechanics, which is also known as wave mechanics or quantum physics.  Quantum mechanics is the branch of physics that studies the behavior of the particles that are very small and make up atoms.

It is important to understand that the components that make up the solid ball that an atom was believed to be are, in fact, much smaller particles going round in circles at extremely high speeds, which gives the impression of being a sphere.  In the exterior orbit(s) are found negatively charged electrons, while positively charged protons and charge-less neutrons form the atom’s nucleus.     

In the 1930s, physicists realized that gravity and electromagnetism were not the only two forces in the universe.  Strong nuclear force, the glue that holds the protons and neutrons of the nucleus together, and weak nuclear force, the force responsible for keeping the electrons in their orbits and for radioactivity, were discovered.    

An atomic bomb is simply the release of strong nuclear force, produced by separating the protons and neutrons of the nucleus of an atom and thereby triggering the explosion of an incredible amount of destructive energy.  We are made of billions of these atoms... we can only try to imagine the amount of power we have inside ourselves.

It was not until 1970s that physicists began to understand that nucleotides (protons and neutrons) are not elemental particles, as was previously believed, but themselves consist of even smaller particles called quarks, of which there are many different types.