How Smooth Is an Atom

When Dalton invented the idea of atoms as participants in chemical reactions, he had the problem of how to stick atomic models together. He instmcted his friend, Peter Ewart, to prepare a set of wooden balls, drill holes into the balls and insert wooden pegs to hold the model in place. These models appeared around 1810, about the same time that Wollaston was postulating the structuring of atoms into regular shapes to form molecules, the word first 

Figuie 4.17. Ball models of molecules (a) atom (b) tetrahedron (c) body-centered cubic. 

Once we have overcome this problem of definition, it is then possible to specify in detail what the forces are and how they act with Brownian motion to give adhesion. That is the purpose of the next chapter. 

Newton, I., Opricfe, Smith and Watford, London, 1704 (reprinted Dover, New York, 1952, p 201). 

Newton, I. In Turnbull, H.W. The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, vol 1, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1959. 

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