What was the greeks experiment for the atom?

Question

I'm doing a chemistry project and I can't seem to find what was the greeks experiment for discovering the atom.

Answer 1

That would be because they never discovered the atom. They didn't have the equipment to do so.

Democritus philosophically reasoned that if you cut an object into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually you would get a piece so small that you can't cut it. He called these pieces atoma, meaning indivisible.

He further reasoned that when you cut through an object, you are actually cutting through the empty space between atoma.

Depending on how you look at it and your definition of cutting, his atoma could be envisioned as what we know to be molecules, atoms, or fundamental particles. But he never discovered any of that, and he couldn't even prove his theory.

And in fact, his theory was not adopted. Instead most of the Greeks used the Fire-Water-Earth-Air system, believing that everything was made of these four species. And I don't believe his idea of empty space, the vacuum between atoma, was adopted either.

Answer 2

The Greek 'atom' was theoretical.
They reasoned that if you continued to grind a substance finer and finer you would reach a point where further grinding would be impossible.

Answer 3

I don't know what, if any, experiments were made but you should probably start with Democritus who proposed atoms (albeit not in the level of detail we use today):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democritus