Democritus's Atomic Theory
Democritus was an amazing philosopher who mainly studied the atomic theory. He was born somewhere around 460 BC, and died around 370 BC. Many of his findings and beliefs are what we still hold correctly today. He proposed an atomic theory in around 450 BC(which means he discovered this at 10, but there is no date that is more accurate), and contrary to popular belief, he did not discover the atom or prove that there were atoms in matter. However, he started the hunt for the atom and its properties. His atomic theory was created to counter the belief that atoms could be split into smaller and smaller parts an infinite amount of times. It stated that atoms are present in all the states of matter but they cannot be destroyed, created individually, or separated from each other. It also stated there was an infinite amount of atoms in the world which always moved and had the ability of linking together. Democritus thought atoms were small, hard particles that had different shapes and sizes but were made of the same material. The property of the individual atoms would define the properties of the matter they compose.