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Dalton's atomic theory was the first complete attempt to describe all matter in terms of atoms and their properties.

Dalton based his theory on the law of conservation of mass and the law of constant composition.

The first part of his theory states that all matter is made of atoms, which are indivisible.

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During cathode ray tube experiment, a negatively charged particle was discovered by J.J. Thomson. This experiment took place in the year 1897. Cathode ray tube is a vacuum tube. The negative particle was called an electron.

Thomson assumed that an electron is two thousand times lighter than a proton and believed that an atom is made up of thousands of electrons. In this atomic structure model, he considered atoms surrounded by a cloud having positive as well as negative charges. The demonstration of the ionization of air by X-ray was also done by him together with Rutherford. They were the first to demonstrate it. Thomson’s model of an atom is similar to a plum pudding.

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Bombardment of gold foil with alpha particles showed that a very small percentage of alpha particles were deflected.

The nuclear model of the atom consists of a small and dense positively charged interior surrounded by a cloud of electrons.

Rutherford needed to come up with an entirely new model of the atom in order to explain his results. Because the vast majority of the alpha particles had passed through the gold, he reasoned that most of the atom was empty space. In contrast, the particles that were highly deflected must have experienced a tremendously powerful force within the atom. He concluded that all of the positive charge and the majority of the mass of the atom must be concentrated in a very small space in the atom's interior, which he called the nucleus. The nucleus is the tiny, dense, central core of the atom and is composed of protons and neutrons.

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To remedy the stability problem, Bohr modified the Rutherford model by requiring that the electrons move in orbits of fixed size and energy. The energy of an electron depends on the size of the orbit and is lower for smaller orbits.

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Niels Bohr, a Danish scientist, explained this line spectrum while developing a model for the atom:

The Bohr model shows that the electrons in atoms are in orbits of differing energy around the nucleus (think of planets orbiting around the sun).

Bohr used the term energy levels (or shells) to describe these orbits of differing energy. He said that the energy of an electron is quantized, meaning electrons can have one energy level or another but nothing in between.

The energy level an electron normally occupies is called its ground state. But it can move to a higher-energy, less-stable level, or shell, by absorbing energy. This higher-energy, less-stable state is called the electron’s excited state.

After it’s done being excited, the electron can return to its original ground state by releasing the energy it has absorbed.