Although exceptions to Dalton’s theory are now known, his theory has endured reasonably well, with modifications, throughout the years. John Dalton’s atomic theory was generally accepted because it explained the laws of conservation of mass, definite proportions, multiple proportions, and other observations. Dalton used this assumption to explain why the ratios of two elements in various compounds, such as oxygen and nitrogen in nitrogen oxides, differed by multiples of each other. When elements react, their atoms may combine in more than one whole-number ratio.Experiments that Dalton and others performed indicated that chemical reactions proceed according to atom to atom ratios which were precise and well-defined. In chemical reactions, atoms combine in small, whole-number ratios.However, atoms of different elements, such as oxygen and mercury, are different from each other. Therefore, every single atom of an element such as oxygen is identical to every other oxygen atom. Dalton suggested that all atoms of the same element have identical weights. Elements are characterized by the weight of their atoms.Dalton based this hypothesis on the law of conservation of mass as stated by Antoine Lavoisier and others around 1785. Atoms of an element cannot be created, destroyed, divided into smaller pieces, or transformed into atoms of another element.
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