Transcript: One hundred years ago studies of the structure of the atom led to a profound shift in our ideas about the fundamental nature of matter. Under the traditional view of Earnest Rutherford, a small solar system module of the atom; the negatively charged electrons orbit or circuit a positively charged nucleus. In the classical picture of the atom using classical physics the electrons should spiral into the nucleus in a tiny fraction of a second implying the collapse of all matter. This obviously doesn’t occur; matter is quite stable. So what was needed was a new theory to explain the structure of the atom, the fact that matter is mostly empty space. This new theory was the quantum theory.