The cubical atom was an early
atom
Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons.
Every solid, liquid, gas ...
ic model in which
electron
The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family,
and are generally thought to be elementary partic ...
s were positioned at the eight corners of a cube in a non-polar atom or molecule. This theory was developed in 1902 by
Gilbert N. Lewis
Gilbert Newton Lewis (October 23 or October 25, 1875 – March 23, 1946) was an American physical chemist and a Dean of the College of Chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. Lewis was best known for his discovery of the covalent bond ...
and published in 1916 in the article "The Atom and the Molecule" and used to account for the phenomenon of
valency
Valence or valency may refer to:
Science
* Valence (chemistry), a measure of an element's combining power with other atoms
* Degree (graph theory), also called the valency of a vertex in graph theory
* Valency (linguistics), aspect of verbs re ...
.
Lewis' theory was based on
Abegg's rule. It was further developed in 1919 by
Irving Langmuir as the cubical octet atom.
The figure below shows structural representations for elements of the second row of the
periodic table
The periodic table, also known as the periodic table of the (chemical) elements, is a rows and columns arrangement of the chemical elements. It is widely used in chemistry, physics, and other sciences, and is generally seen as an icon of ...
.
Although the cubical model of the atom was soon abandoned in favor of the
quantum mechanical
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, qu ...
model based on the
Schrödinger equation
The Schrödinger equation is a linear partial differential equation that governs the wave function of a quantum-mechanical system. It is a key result in quantum mechanics, and its discovery was a significant landmark in the development of th ...
, and is therefore now principally of historical interest, it represented an important step towards the understanding of the chemical bond. The 1916 article by Lewi