Defining Matter Everything in the world is made of matter Water oxygen body cells and gold are all made of matter Matter is anything that takes up space and has a certain amount of material in it called mass Mass is the basic property of an object The space it takes up has a number value to show the amount of material it has in it 4
The idea of matter has been around for a long time The ancient Greeks believed that all matter was made of fire air water earth or some combination of these basic elements Empedocles first suggested a theory to describe matter Empedocles believed that all matter was made of these four elements The proportion of the elements in each thing accounted for the different kinds of matter Stone was composed mostly of earth A rabbit had more fire and water forming it so it was softer and alive Empedocles lived in Sicily between 492 BCE and 432 BCE He was a Greek philosopher poet and politician Empedocles 490 430 BCE 5
earth water air fire The early Greeks believed these four forms of matter made everything in the world The ancient Greeks didn’t have access to the knowledge people have today The problem with Empedocles’s ideas was after breaking a stone the pieces never looked like any of the four basic elements Still his idea was important to science because he was the first to state that some materials were made of a combination of things called elements 6
Later another Greek Democritus proposed a new theory He reasoned that by cutting stone into smaller and smaller pieces that it would finally produce a tiny piece of matter he called the atomos meaning indivisible The atomos of the stone were formed of the same matter The stone atomos differed from atomos of other matter such as rabbit fur This theory established the idea that matter was made of different kinds of things Democritus 460 370 BCE Democritis thought atoms were different in shape and appearance and that they were all different sizes with many variations
