I thought this was all very standard stuff; as I was taught going on half a century ago, the atomic theory of matter simply says you cannot indefinitely divide a sample of something like nitrogen in half. That is, there is a smallest discrete unit of nitrogen that retains all it’s chemical properties as opposed to the notion that nitrogen is like an infinitely divisble continuous fluid.
I thought this was all very standard stuff; as I was taught going on half a century ago, the atomic theory of matter simply says you cannot indefinitely divide a sample of something like nitrogen in half. That is, there is a smallest discrete unit of nitrogen that retains all it’s chemical properties as opposed to the notion that nitrogen is like an infinitely divisble continuous fluid.
How is it being taught these days?