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How Photocopiers Work

Walk into almost any business office, and you'll probably find a photocopier
("copier") with a line of people waiting to use it. For most businesses, small or large,
the copier has become standard equipment, much like having a desk to work at and
a chair to sit in.
What if you had to resort to making carbon copies of important documents, as many
people did before copiers came along? Or worse, imagine how tedious it would be if
you had to recopy everything by hand! Most of us don't think about what's going on
inside a copier while we wait for copies to shoot neatly out into the paper tray, but
it's pretty amazing to think that, in mere seconds, you can produce an exact replica
of what's on a sheet of paper! In this article, we will explore what happens after you
press "Start" on a photocopier.

The Basics
The human-end of making a copy begins with a few basic steps:

Open the copier lid

Place the document to be photocopied face-down on the glass

Select the options you want (number of pages, enlargements, lighter/darker)

Press the Start button

What happens inside the copier at this point is amazing! At its heart, a copier works
because of one basic physical principle: opposite charges attract.
As a kid, you probably played with static electricity and balloons. On a dry winter
day, you can rub a balloon on your sweater and create enough static electricity in
the balloon to create a noticeable force. For example, a balloon charged with static
electricity will attract small bits of paper or particles of sugar very easily.

A copier uses a similar process.

Inside a copier there is a special drum. The drum acts a lot like a balloon -you can charge it with a form of static electricity.

Inside the copier there is also a very fine black powder known as toner. The
drum, charged with static electricity, can attract the toner particles.

There are three things about the drum and the toner that let a copier
perform its magic:

The drum can be selectively charged, so that only parts of it attract toner. In
a copier, you make an "image" -- in static electricity -- on the surface of the
drum. Where the original sheet of paper is black, you create static electricity
on the drum. Where it is white you do not. What you want is for the white
areas of the original sheet of paper to NOT attract toner. The way this
selectivity is accomplished in a copier is with light -- this is why it's called
a photocopier!

Somehow the toner has to get onto the drum and then onto a sheet of paper.
The drum selectively attracts toner. Then the sheet of paper gets charged
with static electricity and it pulls the toner off the drum.

The toner is heat sensitive, so the loose toner particles are attached (fused)
to the paper with heat as soon as they come off the drum.

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The drum, or belt, is made out of photoconductive material. Here are the actual
steps involved in making a photocopy:

The surface of the drum is charged.

An intense beam of light moves across the paper that you have placed on the
copier's glass surface. Light is reflected from white areas of the paper and
strikes the drum below.

Wherever a photon of light hits, electrons are emitted from the

photoconductive atoms in the drum and neutralize the positive charges
above. Dark areas on the original (such as pictures or text) do not reflect light
onto the drum, leaving regions of positive charges on the drum's surface.

Negatively charged, dry, black pigment called toner is then spread over the
surface of the drum, and the pigment particles adhere to the positive charges
that remain.

A positively charged sheet of paper then passes over the surface of the drum,
attracting the beads of toner away from it.

The paper is then heated and pressed to fuse the image formed by the toner
to the paper's surface.

This diagram helps see the process:

When the copier illuminates the sheet of paper on the glass surface of a
copier, a pattern of the image is projected onto the positively charged
photoreceptive drum below. Light reflected from blank areas on the page
hits the drum and causes the charged particles coating the drum's surface
to be neutralized. This leaves positive charges only where there are dark
areas on the paper that did not reflect light. These positive charges
attract negatively charged toner. The toner is then transferred and fused
to a positively charged sheet of paper.
Inside a Photocopier
If you take a photocopier apart, you might be overwhelmed by how many different
parts there are. However, the actual photocopying process relies on only a few, key
pieces:

Photoreceptor drum (or belt)

Corona wires

Lamp and lenses

Toner

Fuser

In the following sections, you'll learn about each of these parts.

Various photocopier drums

Photoreceptor Drum
The photoreceptor drum (or, in some photocopiers, belt) is the heart of the
system. A drum is basically a metal roller covered by a layer
of photoconductive material. This layer is made out of a semiconductor such as
selenium, germanium or silicon. What makes elements like selenium so cool is
that they can conduct electricity in some cases, but not in others. In the dark, the
photoconductive layer on the drum acts as an insulator, resisting the flow of
electrons from one atom to another. But when the layer is hit by light, the energy of
the photons liberates electrons and allows current to pass through! These newly
freed electrons are what neutralizes the positive charge coating the drum to form
the latent image.
It's easy to imagine how you might project a copy of an image on a photoreceptive
belt that has roughly the same dimensions as the sheet of paper containing the
image. A problem emerges when you think about doing the same thing on a thin,
cylindrical drum. How can the surface area of the drum possibly match the real
estate on a sheet of paper?
The solution is to simply rotate the drum while you're making a copy. If you rotate
the drum in lockstep with the movement of the light beam across the original
document, you can build the image strip by strip. After one strip of light is focused
onto a corresponding swath of the drum, the drum rotates to expose a fresh area of
the photoconductor. Meanwhile, the previously exposed region of the drum swings
into contact with the toner, and then with the paper.
Because the length of a standard printed page is a lot larger than the circumference
of the drum in a modern photocopier, one full rotation of the drum will only replicate

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a small piece of the page. The drum actually has to be cleaned, recharged with ions,
exposed to photons, and sprinkled with toner multiple times in order to duplicate
the entire original. To the casual observer, the process appears continuous, because
it's all seamlessly coordinated inside the photocopier as the drum rotates.
Corona Wires
For a photocopier to work, a field of positive charges must be generated on the
surface of both the drum and the copy paper. These tasks are accomplished by
the corona wires. These wires are subjected to a high voltage, which they
subsequently transfer to the drum and paper in the form of static electricity.
One of these wires is stretched parallel to the drum surface and charges the
photoconductive surface with positive ions, and the other wire is positioned to coat
the paper's surface as the paper shoots by on its way to the drum.
Lamp and Lenses
Making a photocopy requires a light source with enough energy to boot electrons
out of the photoconductive atoms. What wavelengths of light can do this?
It turns out that most of the visible spectrum of light contains enough energy to
drive the process, especially the green and blue end of the spectrum. Anything
lower than the red portion of the visible spectrum doesn't have enough gusto to
activate the photoconductor. And, although UV light has more than enough
firepower to make a photocopy, it can be very damaging to our eyes and skin. This
is why photocopiers use a plain old incandescent or fluorescent bulb to flash
light onto the original document.
When the lamp in the copier is turned on, it moves across the inside of the copier,
illuminating one strip of the paper at a time. A mirror attached to the lamp
assembly directs reflected light through a lens onto the rotating drum below. The
lens works just like the one on your camera. It allows you to focus a copy of the
image in a specific place. Although you can't really focus the image on a
photocopier to make the final product more or less blurry, you can change the
distance between the lens and the original or between the lens and drum to
either reduce or magnify the size of the original image on your copy.
Toner
Toner is sometimes referred to as dry ink, but toner isn't actually ink at all! Ink is a
pigmented liquid. Toner is a fine, negatively charged, plastic-based powder. The
black color in photocopier toner comes from pigments blended into the plastic
particles while they are being made.
In your photocopier, toner is stuck on larger, positively charged beads and stored
inside a toner cartridge. When toner-coated beads are rolled over the drum, the

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toner particles find the positively charged ions on the unexposed areas on the
drum's surface much more attractive than the weakly charged bead. The same
particles are subsequently even more drawn to the electro statically charged paper.
The plastic in the toner lets you keep it from jumping ship once you've finally got it
on the paper; all you have to do is apply heat to the toner, and the plastic particles
melt and fuse the pigment to the paper.

A small bead coated with particles of toner

The Fuser
The fuser provides the finishing touches that make the toner image on a
sheet of paper permanent. The fuser has to do two things:

Melt and press the toner image into the paper

Prevent the melted toner and/or the paper from sticking to the fuser

All that's required to accomplish these tasks is quartz tube lamps and Tefloncoated rollers. The sheet of paper is sent between two of the rollers. Then, the
rollers gently press down on the page to embed the toner in the paper fiber.
Meanwhile, inside the rollers, the lamps are on, generating enough heat to melt the
toner. Why doesn't the toner melt onto the rollers instead? Just like non-stick coating
prevents your dinner from becoming glued to the bottom of your frying pan, the
Teflon coating the rollers keeps the toner and paper from sticking to them.
Putting It All Together
In a photocopier, the light-induced conductivity of the drum is exploited to
create a latent image in the form of electrical charges on the surface of the drum.

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This image is made visible and transferred to paper using a special, charged toner.
Here's how it all comes together to make a copy:
1. For the photocopier to work its magic, the surface of the photoconductive
material must first be coated with a layer of positively charged ions by
the corona wire.
1. When you hit the Start button, a strong lamp moves across the inside of the
copier and casts light onto the paper you're copying, and the drum starts to
rotate. As light reflects off of blank areas of the paper, mirrors direct it
through onto the drum surface. Like dark clothing on a hot sunny day, the
dark areas of the original absorb the light, and the corresponding areas on
the drum's surface are not illuminated.
2. In the places that light strikes the rotating drum, the energy of
the photons kicks electrons away from the photoconductive atoms.
3. Opposites attract -- the positively charged ions coating the photoconductive
layer attract the freed electrons. The marriage of one ion and one electron
produces a neutral particle. Charged particles remain only in places where
light didn't hit the drum because it wasn't reflected from the original -- the
dark spaces taken up by text and pictures on the page! This part of the
process loosely resembles how a camera takes a picture. If you've read How
Photographic Film Works, you know that when film is exposed to light, the
energy of the photons causes chemical changes in the silver halide grains
coating the film.
4.

This creates a negative image of what you see through the viewfinder. With
a photocopier, however, you end up with a real image created from a
pattern of positive charges left after exposure to light. And while you have to
develop film using special chemical processes and print it on light-sensitive
photographic paper, the photocopier produces a visible image with only dry
ink, heat and regular paper.

5. Voltage is applied to the aluminum core of the drum. Since light renders
selenium conductive, current can flow through the photoconductive layer
while the drum is being illuminated, and the electrons released by the atoms
are quickly replaced by the electrons that form the current flowing through
the drum.
6. The exposed areas of the drum rotate past rollers encrusted with beads of
toner. Tiny particles of toner are pressed against the drum's surface. The
plastic-based toner particles have a negative charge and are attracted to
areas of positive charges that remain on the drum's surface.

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7. The corona wire passes over a sheet of paper so that the paper's surface
becomes electrically charged.
8. The area of the drum freshly coated with toner spins into contact with a
positively charged sheet of paper. The electric field surrounding the paper
exerts a stronger pull than the ions coating the drum's surface, and the toner
particles stick to the paper as the drum passes by.
9. Once the entire original has been recreated on toner in the page, the paper
proceeds on through the copier to .
10.The fuser. The weak attraction between the toner particles and the surface
of the sheet of paper can easily be disrupted. To fix the toner image in place
on the paper's surface, the entire sheet is shunted through the fuser's
heated rollers. The heat melts the plastic material in the toner and fuses
the pigment to the page.
By the time you reach for your copy in the collection tray, the photocopier has
already prepared for the next go-round by again cleaning off the drum's surface and
applying a fresh coat of positively charged ions to it.
How Laser Printers Work

The term inkjet printer is very descriptive of the process at work -- these printers
put an image on paper using tiny jets of ink. The term laser printer, on the other
hand, is a bit more mysterious -- how can a laser beam, a highly focused beam
of light, write letters and draw pictures on paper?
Many people use laser printers in their day-to-day lives, but most probably never
think about the technology that turns those bits of digital data into a legible images
and text. Very few of us ever consider the drum, the fuser the data exchange or the
static electricity that all come together to print our memos.

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In this article, we'll unravel the mystery behind the laser printer, tracing a page's
path from the characters on your computer screen to printed letters on paper. As it
turns out, the laser printing process is based on some very basic scientific principles
applied in an exceptionally innovative way.
The Basics: Static Electricity
The primary principle at work in a laser printer is static electricity, the same energy
that makes clothes in the dryer stick together or a lightning bolt travel from a
thundercloud to the ground. Static electricity is simply an electrical charge built up
on an insulated object, such as a balloon or your body. Since oppositely
charged atoms are attracted to each other, objects with opposite static electricity
fields cling together.
A laser printer uses this phenomenon as a sort of "temporary glue." The core
component of this system is the photoreceptor, typically a revolving drum or
cylinder. This drum assembly is made out of highly photoconductive material
that is discharged by light photons.

The basic components of a laser printer

The Basics: Drum

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Initially, the drum is given a total positive charge by the charge corona wire, a
wire with an electrical current running through it. (Some printers use a charged
roller instead of a corona wire, but the principle is the same.) As the drum revolves,
the printer shines a tiny laser beam across the surface to discharge certain points.
In this way, the laser "draws" the letters and images to be printed as a pattern of
electrical charges -- an electrostatic image. The system can also work with the
charges reversed -- that is, a positive electrostatic image on a negative
background.
After the pattern is set, the printer coats the drum with positively charged toner -- a
fine, black powder. Since it has a positive charge, the toner clings to the negative
discharged areas of the drum, but not to the positively charged "background." This
is something like writing on a soda can with glue and then rolling it over some flour:
The flour only sticks to the glue-coated part of the can, so you end up with a
message written in powder.
With the powder pattern affixed, the drum rolls over a sheet of paper, which is
moving along a belt below. Before the paper rolls under the drum, it is given a
negative charge by the transfer corona wire (charged roller). This charge is
stronger than the negative charge of the electrostatic image, so the paper can pull
the toner powder away. Since it is moving at the same speed as the drum, the paper
picks up the image pattern exactly. To keep the paper from clinging to the drum, it is
discharged by the detac corona wire immediately after picking up the toner.

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The Basics: Fuser

Finally, the printer passes the paper through the fuser, a pair of heated rollers. As
the paper passes through these rollers, the loose toner powder melts, fusing with

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the fibers in the paper. The fuser rolls the paper to the output tray, and you have
your finished page. The fuser also heats up the paper itself, of course, which is why
pages are always hot when they come out of a laser printer or photocopier.
So what keeps the paper from burning up? Mainly, speed -- the paper passes
through the rollers so quickly that it doesn't get very hot.
After depositing toner on the paper, the drum surface passes the discharge lamp.
This bright light exposes the entire photoreceptor surface, erasing the electrical
image. The drum surface then passes the charge corona wire, which reapplies the
positive charge.
Conceptually, this is all there is to it. Of course, actually bringing everything
together is a lot more complex. In the following sections, we'll examine the different
components in greater detail to see how they produce text and images so quickly
and precisely.

The Controller: The Conversation

Before a laser printer can do anything else, it needs to receive the page data and
figure out how it's going to put everything on the paper. This is the job of
the printer controller.
The printer controller is the laser printer's main onboard computer. It talks to the
host computer (for example, your PC) through a communications port, such as
a parallel port or USB port. At the start of the printing job, the laser printer
establishes with the host computer how they will exchange data. The controller may
have to start and stop the host computer periodically to process the information it
has received.
In an office, a laser printer will probably be connected to several separate host
computers, so multiple users can print documents from their machine. The
controller handles each one separately, but may be carrying on many
"conversations" concurrently. This ability to handle several jobs at once is one of the
reasons why laser printers are so popular.
The Controller: The Language
For the printer controller and the host computer to communicate, they need to
speak the same page description language. In earlier printers, the computer
sent a special sort of text file and a simple code giving the printer some basic
formatting information. Since these early printers had only a few fonts, this was a
very straightforward process.

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These days, you might have hundreds of different fonts to choose from, and you
wouldn't think twice about printing a complex graphic. To handle all of this diverse
information, the printer needs to speak a more advanced language.
The primary printer languages these days are Hewlett Packard's Printer Command
Language (PCL) and Adobe's Postscript. Both of these languages describe the
page in vector form -- that is, as mathematical values of geometric shapes, rather
than as a series of dots (a bitmap image). The printer itself takes the vector images
and converts them into a bitmap page. With this system, the printer can receive
elaborate, complex pages, featuring any sort of font or image. Also, since the
printer creates the bitmap image itself, it can use its maximum printer resolution.
Some printers use a graphical device interface (GDI) format instead of a
standard PCL. In this system, the host computer creates the dot array itself, so the
controller doesn't have to process anything -- it just sends the dot instructions on to
the laser.
But in most laser printers, the controller must organize all of the data it receives
from the host computer. This includes all of the commands that tell the printer what
to do -- what paper to use, how to format the page, how to handle the font, etc. For
the controller to work with this data, it has to get it in the right order.
The Controller: Setting up the Page
Once the data is structured, the controller begins putting the page together. It sets
the text margins, arranges the words and places any graphics. When the page is
arranged, the raster image processor(RIP) takes the page data, either as a whole
or piece by piece, and breaks it down into an array of tiny dots. As we'll see in the
next section, the printer needs the page in this form so the laser can write it out on
the photoreceptor drum.
In most laser printers, the controller saves all print-job data in its own memory. This
lets the controller put different printing jobs into a queue so it can work through
them one at a time. It also saves time when printing multiple copies of a document,
since the host computer only has to send the data once.

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The Laser Assembly

Since it actually draws the page, the printer's laser system -- or laser scanning
assembly -- must be incredibly precise. The traditional laser scanning assembly
includes:

A laser

A movable mirror

A lens

The laser receives the page data -- the tiny dots that make up the text and images
-- one horizontal line at a time. As the beam moves across the drum, the laser emits
a pulse of light for every dot to be printed, and no pulse for every dot of empty
space.
The laser doesn't actually move the beam itself. It bounces the beam off a
movable mirror instead. As the mirror moves, it shines the beam through a series
of lenses. This system compensates for the image distortion caused by the varying
distance between the mirror and points along the drum.
Writing the Page
The laser assembly moves in only one plane, horizontally. After each horizontal
scan, the printer moves the photoreceptor drum up a notch so the laser assembly
can draw the next line. A small print-engine computer synchronizes all of this
perfectly, even at dizzying speeds.
Some laser printers use a strip of light emitting diodes (LEDs) to write the page
image, instead of a single laser. Each dot position has its own dedicated light, which
means the printer has one set print resolution. These systems cost less to

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manufacture than true laser assemblies, but they produce inferior results. Typically,
you'll only find them in less expensive printers.
Laser printers work the same basic way as photocopiers, with a few significant
differences. The most obvious difference is the source of the image: A photocopier
scans an image by reflecting a bright light off of it, while a laser printer receives the
image in digital form.
Another major difference is how the electrostatic image is created. When a
photocopier bounces light off a piece of paper, the light reflects back onto the
photoreceptor from the white areas but is absorbed by the dark areas. In this
process, the "background" is discharged, while the electrostatic image retains a
positive charge. This method is called "write-white."
In most laser printers, the process is reversed: The laser discharges the lines of the
electrostatic image and leaves the background positively charged. In a printer, this
"write-black" system is easier to implement than a "write-white" system, and it
generally produces better results.
Toner Basics
One of the most distinctive things about a laser printer (or photocopier) is the toner.
It's such a strange concept for the paper to grab the "ink" rather than the printer
applying it. And it's even stranger that the "ink" isn't really ink at all.
So what is toner? The short answer is: It's an electrically-charged powder with two
main ingredients: pigment and plastic.
The role of the pigment is fairly obvious -- it provides the coloring (black, in a
monochrome printer) that fills in the text and images. This pigment is blended into
plastic particles, so the toner will melt when it passes through the heat of the fuser.
This quality gives toner a number of advantages over liquid ink. Chiefly, it firmly
binds to the fibers in almost any type of paper, which means the text won't smudge
or bleed easily.
Applying Toner
So how does the printer apply this toner to the electrostatic image on the drum?
The powder is stored in the toner hopper, a small container built into a removable
casing. The printer gathers the toner from the hopper with the developer unit. The
"developer" is actually a collection of small, negatively charged magnetic beads.
These beads are attached to a rotating metal roller, which moves them through the
toner in the toner hopper.
Because they are negatively charged, the developer beads collect the positive toner
particles as they pass through. The roller then brushes the beads past the drum

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assembly. The electrostatic image has a stronger negative charge than the
developer beads, so the drum pulls the toner particles away.
The drum then moves over the paper, which has an even stronger charge and so
grabs the toner. After collecting the toner, the paper is immediately discharged by
the detac corona wire. At this point, the only thing keeping the toner on the page
is gravity -- if you were to blow on the page, you would completely lose the image.
The page must pass through the fuser to affix the toner. The fuser rollers are heated
by internal quartz tube lamps, so the plastic in the toner melts as it passes
through.
But what keeps the toner from collecting on the fuser rolls, rather than sticking to
the page? To keep this from happening, the fuser rolls must be coated with Teflon,
the same non-stick material that keeps your breakfast from sticking to the bottom
of the frying pan.
Color Printers
Initially, most commercial laser printers were limited to monochrome printing (black
writing on white paper). But now, there are lots of color laser printers on the market.
Essentially, color printers work the same way as monochrome printers, except they
go through the entire printing process four times -- one pass each for cyan (blue),
magenta (red), yellow and black. By combining these four colors of toner in varying
proportions, you can generate the full spectrum of color.
There are several different ways of doing this. Some models have four toner and
developer units on a rotating wheel. The printer lays down the electrostatic image
for one color and puts that toner unit into position. It then applies this color to the
paper and goes through the process again for the next color. Some printers add all
four colors to a plate before placing the image on paper.
Some more expensive printers actually have a complete printer unit -- a laser
assembly, a drum and a toner system -- for each color. The paper simply moves
past the different drum heads, collecting all the colors in a sort of assembly line.
Advantages of a Laser Printer
So why get a laser printer rather than a cheaper inkjet printer? The main
advantages of laser printers are speed, precision and economy. A laser can move
very quickly, so it can "write" with much greater speed than an ink jet. And because
the laser beam has an unvarying diameter, it can draw more precisely, without
spilling any excess ink.
Laser printers tend to be more expensive than inkjet printers, but it doesn't cost as
much to keep them running -- toner powder is cheap and lasts a long time, while
you can use up expensive ink cartridges very quickly. This is why offices typically

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use a laser printer as their "work horse," their machine for printing long text
documents. In most models, this mechanical efficiency is complemented by
advanced processing efficiency. A typical laser-printer controller can serve
everybody in a small office.
When they were first introduced, laser printers were too expensive to use as a
personal printer. Since that time, however, laser printers have gotten much more
affordable. Now you can pick up a basic model for just a little bit more than a nice
inkjet printer.
As technology advances, laser-printer prices should continue to drop, while
performance improves. We'll also see a number of innovative design variations, and
possibly brand-new applications of electrostatic printing. Many inventors believe
we've only scratched the surface of what we can do with simple static electricity!
How Inkjet Printers Work

No matter where you are reading this article, you most likely have a printer nearby.
And there's a very good chance that it is an inkjet printer. Since their introduction
in the latter half of the 1980s, inkjet printers have grown in popularity and
performance while dropping significantly in price.
An inkjet printer is any printer that places extremely small droplets of ink onto
paper to create an image. If you ever look at a piece of paper that has come out of
an inkjet printer, you know that:

The dots are extremely small (usually between 50 and 60 microns in

diameter), so small that they are tinier than the diameter of a human hair (70
microns)!

The dots are positioned very precisely, with resolutions of up to 1440x720

dots per inch (dpi).

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The dots can have different colors combined together to create photo-quality
images.

In this article, you will learn about the various parts of an inkjet printer and how
these parts work together to create an image. You will also learn about the ink
cartridges and the special paper some inkjet printers use.
Impact vs. Non-impact
There are several major printer technologies available. These technologies can be
broken down into two main categories with several types in each:
Impact - These printers have a mechanism that touches the paper in order to
create an image. There are two main impact technologies:

Dot matrix printers use a series of small pins to strike a ribbon coated with
ink, causing the ink to transfer to the paper at the point of impact.

Character printers are basically computerized typewriters. They have a ball

or series of bars with actual characters (letters and numbers) embossed on
the surface. The appropriate character is struck against the ink ribbon,
transferring the character's image to the paper. Character printers are fast
and sharp for basic text, but very limited for other use.

Non-impact - These printers do not touch the paper when creating an image. Inkjet
printers are part of this group, which includes:

Inkjet printers, which are described in this article, use a series of nozzles to
spray drops of ink directly on the paper.

Laser printers, covered in-depth in How Laser Printers Work, use dry ink
(toner), static electricity, and heat to place and bond the ink onto the paper.

Solid ink printers contain sticks of wax-like ink that are melted and applied
to the paper. The ink then hardens in place.

Dye-sublimation printers have a long roll of transparent film that resembles

sheets of red-, blue-, yellow- and gray-colored cellophane stuck together end
to end. Embedded in this film are solid dyes corresponding to the four basic
colors used in printing: cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK). The print
head uses a heating element that varies in temperature, depending on the
amount of a particular color that needs to be applied. The dyes vaporize and
permeate the glossy surface of the paper before they return to solid form.
The printer does a complete pass over the paper for each of the basic colors,
gradually building the image.

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Thermal wax printers are something of a hybrid of dye-sublimation and solid

ink technologies. They use a ribbon with alternating CMYK color bands. The
ribbon passes in front of a print head that has a series of tiny heated pins.
The pins cause the wax to melt and adhere to the paper, where it hardens in
place.

Thermal auto chrome printers have the color in the paper instead of in the
printer. There are three layers (cyan, magenta and yellow) in the paper, and
each layer is activated by the application of a specific amount of heat. The
print head has a heating element that can vary in temperature. The print
head passes over the paper three times, providing the appropriate
temperature for each color layer as needed.

Out of all of these incredible technologies, inkjet printers are by far the most
popular. In fact, the only technology that comes close today is laser printers.

The print head assembly

Print head - The core of an inkjet printer, the print head contains a series of
nozzles that are used to spray drops of ink.

Ink cartridges - Depending on the manufacturer and model of the printer,

ink cartridges come in various combinations, such as separate black and
color cartridges, color and black in a single cartridge or even a cartridge for
each ink color. The cartridges of some inkjet printers include the print head
itself.

Print head stepper motor A stepper motor moves the print head
assembly (print head and ink cartridges) back and forth across the paper.
Some printers have another stepper motor to park the print head assembly
when the printer is not in use. Parking means that the print head assembly is
restricted from accidentally moving, like a parking brake on a car.

20

Belt - A belt is used to attach the print head assembly to the stepper motor.

Stabilizer bar - The print head assembly uses a stabilizer bar to ensure that
movement is precise and controlled.

Paper feed assembly:

Paper tray/feeder - Most inkjet printers have a tray that you load the paper
into. Some printers dispense with the standard tray for a feeder instead. The
feeder typically snaps open at an angle on the back of the printer, allowing
you to place paper in it. Feeders generally do not hold as much paper as a
traditional paper tray.

Rollers - A set of rollers pull the paper in from the tray or feeder and
advance the paper when the print head assembly is ready for another pass.

Paper feed stepper motor - This stepper motor powers the rollers to move
the paper in the exact increment needed to ensure a continuous image is
printed.

Power supply - While earlier printers often had an external transformer,

most printers sold today use a standard power supply that is incorporated
into the printer itself.

Control circuitry - A small but sophisticated amount of circuitry is built into

the printer to control all the mechanical aspects of operation, as well as
decode the information sent to the printer from the computer.

Interface port(s) - The parallel port is still used by many printers, but most
newer printers use the USB port. A few printers connect using a serial port or
small computer system interface (SCSI) port

Heat vs. Vibration

Different types of inkjet printers form their droplets of ink in different ways. There
are two main inkjet technologies currently used by printer manufacturers:

Thermal bubble - Used by manufacturers such as Canon and Hewlett

Packard, this method is commonly referred to as bubble jet. In a thermal
inkjet printer, tiny resistors create heat, and this heat vaporizes ink to create
a bubble. As the bubble expands, some of the ink is pushed out of a nozzle
onto the paper. When the bubble "pops" (collapses), a vacuum is created.
This pulls more ink into the print head from the cartridge. A typical bubble jet
print head has 300 or 600 tiny nozzles, and all of them can fire a droplet
simultaneously. Click the button to see how a thermal bubble inkjet
printer works.

21

Piezoelectric - Patented by Epson, this technology uses piezo crystals. A

crystal is located at the back of the ink reservoir of each nozzle. The crystal
receives a tiny electric charge that causes it to vibrate. When the crystal
vibrates inward, it forces a tiny amount of ink out of the nozzle. When it
vibrates out, it pulls some more ink into the reservoir to replace the ink
sprayed out.

Click on the button to see how a piezoelectric inkjet printer works.

Let's walk through the printing process to see just what happens.
Click "OK" to Print
When you click on a button to print, there is a sequence of events that take place:
1. The software application you are using sends the data to be printed to the
printer driver.
2. The driver translates the data into a format that the printer can understand
and checks to see that the printer is online and available to print.
3. The data is sent by the driver from the computer to the printer via the
connection interface
4. The printer receives the data from the computer. It stores a certain amount of
data in a buffer. The buffer can range from 512 KB random access memory
(RAM) to 16 MB RAM, depending on the model. Buffers are useful because
they allow the computer to finish with the printing process quickly, instead of
having to wait for the actual page to print. A large buffer can hold a complex
document or several basic documents.
5. If the printer has been idle for a period of time, it will normally go through a
short clean cycle to make sure that the print head(s) are clean. Once the
clean cycle is complete, the printer is ready to begin printing.
6. The control circuitry activates the paper feed stepper motor. This engages the
rollers, which feed a sheet of paper from the paper tray/feeder into the
printer. A small trigger mechanism in the tray/feeder is depressed when there
is paper in the tray or feeder. If the trigger is not depressed, the printer lights
up the "Out of Paper" LED and sends an alert to the computer.
7. Once the paper is fed into the printer and positioned at the start of the page,
the print head stepper motor uses the belt to move the print head assembly
across the page. The motor pauses for the merest fraction of a second each
time that the print head sprays dots of ink on the page and then moves a tiny
bit before stopping again. This stepping happens so fast that it seems like a
continuous motion.

22
8. Multiple dots are made at each stop. It sprays the CMYK colors in precise
amounts to make any other color imaginable.
9. At the end of each complete pass, the paper feed stepper motor advances
the paper a fraction of an inch. Depending on the inkjet model, the print head
is reset to the beginning side of the page, or, in most cases, simply reverses
direction and begins to move back across the page as it prints.
10.This process continues until the page is printed. The time it takes to print a
page can vary widely from printer to printer. It will also vary based on the
complexity of the page and size of any images on the page. For example, a
printer may be able to print 16 pages per minute (PPM) of black text but
take a couple of minutes to print one, full-color, page-sized image.
11.Once the printing is complete, the print head is parked. The paper feed
stepper motor spins the rollers to finish pushing the completed page into the
output tray. Most printers today use inks that are very fast-drying, so that you
can immediately pick up the sheet without smudging it.

A typical color ink cartridge: This cartridge has cyan, magenta and yellow
inks in separate reservoirs.
Paper and Ink
Inkjet printers are fairly inexpensive. They cost less than a typical black-and-white
laser printer, and much less than a color laser printer. In fact, quite a few of the
manufacturers sell some of their printers at a loss. Quite often, you can find the
printer on sale for less than you would pay for a set of the ink cartridges!
Why would they do this? Because they count on the supplies you purchase to
provide their profit. This is very similar to the way the video business works. The
hardware is sold at or below cost. Once you buy a particular brand of hardware,
then you must buy the other products that work with that hardware. In other words,

23
you can't buy a printer from Manufacturer A and ink cartridges from Manufacturer B.
They will not work together.
Another way that they have reduced costs is by incorporating much of the actual
print head into the cartridge itself. The manufacturers believe that since the print
head is the part of the printer that is most likely to wear out, replacing it every time
you replace the cartridge increases the life of the printer.
The paper you use on an inkjet printer greatly determines the quality of the image.
Standard copier paper works, but doesn't provide as crisp and bright an image as
paper made for an inkjet printer. There are two main factors that affect image
quality:

Brightness

Absorption

The brightness of a paper is normally determined by how rough the surface of the
paper is. A course or rough paper will scatter light in several directions, whereas a
smooth paper will reflect more of the light back in the same direction. This makes
the paper appear brighter, which in turn makes any image on the paper appear
brighter. You can see this yourself by comparing a photo in a newspaper with a
photo in a magazine. The smooth paper of the magazine page reflects light back to
your eye much better than the rough texture of the newspaper. Any paper that is
listed as being bright is generally a smoother-than-normal paper.
The other key factor in image quality is absorption. When the ink is sprayed onto
the paper, it should stay in a tight, symmetrical dot. The ink should not be absorbed
too much into the paper. If that happens, the dot will begin to feather. This means
that it will spread out in an irregular fashion to cover a slightly larger area than the
printer expects it to. The result is an page that looks somewhat fuzzy, particularly at
the edges of objects and text.

Imagine that the dot on the left is on coated paper and the dot on the
right is on low-grade copier paper. Notice how irregular and larger the
right dot is compared to the left one.

24
As stated, feathering is caused by the paper absorbing the ink. To combat this, highquality inkjet paper is coated with a waxy film that keeps the ink on the surface of
the paper. Coated paper normally yields a dramatically better print than other
paper. The low absorption of coated paper is key to the high resolution capabilities
of many of today's inkjet printers. For example, a typical Epson inkjet printer can
print at a resolution of up to 720x720 dpi on standard paper. With coated paper, the
resolution increases to 1440x720 dpi. The reason is that the printer can actually
shift the paper slightly and add a second row of dots for every normal row, knowing
that the image will not feather and cause the dots to blur together.
Inkjet printers are capable of printing on a variety of media. Commercial inkjet
printers sometimes spray directly on an item like the label on a beer bottle. For
consumer use, there are a number of specialty papers, ranging from adhesivebacked labels or stickers to business cards and brochures. You can even get iron-on
transfers that allow you to create an image and put it on a T-shirt! One thing is for
certain, inkjet printers definitely provide an easy and affordable way to unleash your
creativity.
For more information on inkjet printers and related topics, check out the links on the
next page.
REFILLING CARTRIDGES
Because of the expense of inkjet cartridges, a huge business has grown around the
idea of refilling them. For most people, refilling makes good sense, but there are a
few things to be aware of:

Make sure the refill kit is for your printer model. As you learned in the
previous section, different printers use different technologies for putting the
ink on the paper. If the wrong type of ink is used, it can degrade the output or
possibly damage the printer. While some commercial inkjets use oil-based
inks, virtually all desktop inkjets for home or office use have water-based ink.
The exact ink composition varies greatly between manufacturers. For
example, thermal bubble inkjets need ink that is stable at higher
temperatures than piezoelectric printers.

Most manufacturers require that you use only their approved ink. Refill kits
normally will void your warranty.

While you can refill cartridges, be very careful of the ones that have the print
head built into the cartridge. You do not want to refill these more than two or
three times, or the print head will begin to deteriorate and could damage
your printer.

How Lasers Work

25
"Star Wars," "Star Trek," "Battlestar Galactica" -- laser
technology plays a pivotal role in science fiction movies
and books. It's no doubt thanks to these sorts of stories
that we now associate lasers with futuristic warfare and
sleek spaceships.
But lasers play a pivotal role in our everyday lives, too.
The fact is, they show up in an amazing range of
products and technologies. You'll find them in
everything from CD players to dental drills to highspeed metal cutting machines to measuring
systems. Tattoo removal, hair replacement, eye surgery
-- they all use lasers. But what is a laser? What makes a
laser beam different from the beam of a flashlight?
Specifically, what makes a laser light different from
other kinds of light? How are lasers classified?

The Optical Damage

Threshold test station
at NASA Langley
Research Center.

In this article, you'll learn all about the different types of lasers, their different
wavelengths and the uses to which we put them. But first, let's start with the
fundamentals of laser technology: go to the next page to find out the basics of an
atom.

The Basics of an Atom

26

An atom, in the simplest model, consists of a nucleus and orbiting

electrons.
There are only about 100 different kinds of atoms in the entire universe. Everything
we see is made up of these 100 atoms in an unlimited number of combinations.
How these atoms are arranged and bonded together determines whether the atoms
make up a cup of water, a piece of metal, or the fizz that comes out of your soda
can!
Atoms are constantly in motion. They continuously vibrate, move and rotate. Even
the atoms that make up the chairs that we sit in are moving around. Solids are
actually in motion! Atoms can be in different states of excitation. In other words,
they can have different energies. If we apply a lot of energy to an atom, it can leave
what is called the ground-state energy level and go to an excited level. The
level of excitation depends on the amount of energy that is applied to the atom via
heat, light, or electricity.
This simple atom consists of a nucleus (containing the protons and neutrons) and
an electron cloud. It's helpful to think of the electrons in this cloud circling
the nucleus in many different orbits

Absorbing Energy

27

Absorption of energy: An atom absorbs energy in the form of heat, light,

or electricity. Electrons may move from a lower-energy orbit to a higherenergy orbit.
Consider the illustration from the previous page. Although more modern views of
the atom do not depict discrete orbits for the electrons, it can be useful to think of
these orbits as the different energy levels of the atom. In other words, if we apply
some heat to an atom, we might expect that some of the electrons in the lowerenergy orbitals would transition to higher-energy orbitals farther away from the
nucleus.
This is a highly simplified view of things, but it actually reflects the core idea of
how atoms work in terms of lasers.
Once an electron moves to a higher-energy orbit, it eventually wants to return to the
ground state. When it does, it releases its energy as a photon -- a particle of light.
You see atoms releasing energy as photons all the time. For example, when the
heating element in a toaster turns bright red, the red color is caused by atoms,
excited by heat, releasing red photons. When you see a picture on a TV screen,
what you are seeing is phosphor atoms, excited by high-speed electrons, emitting
different colors of light. Anything that produces light -- fluorescent lights, gas
lanterns, incandescent bulbs -- does it through the action of electrons changing
orbits and releasing photons
The Laser/Atom Connection
A laser is a device that controls the way that energized atoms release photons.
"Laser" is an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of
radiation, which describes very succinctly how a laser works.
Although there are many types of lasers, all have certain essential features. In a
laser, the lasing medium is pumped to get the atoms into an excited state.
Typically, very intense flashes of light or electrical discharges pump the lasing
medium and create a large collection of excited-state atoms (atoms with higherenergy electrons). It is necessary to have a large collection of atoms in the excited
state for the laser to work efficiently. In general, the atoms are excited to a level

28
that is two or three levels above the ground state. This increases the degree of
population inversion. The population inversion is the number of atoms in the
excited state versus the number in ground state.

Once the lasing medium is pumped, it contains a collection of atoms with some
electrons sitting in excited levels. The excited electrons have energies greater than
the more relaxed electrons. Just as the electron absorbed some amount of energy to
reach this excited level, it can also release this energy. As the figure below
illustrates, the electron can simply relax, and in turn rid itself of some energy.
This emitted energy comes in the form of photons(light energy). The photon
emitted has a very specific wavelength (color) that depends on the state of the
electron's energy when the photon is released. Two identical atoms with electrons in
identical states will release photons with identical wavelengths.
Laser Light
Laser light is very different from normal light. Laser light has the following
properties:

The light released is monochromatic. It contains one specific wavelength of

light (one specific color). The wavelength of light is determined by the
amount of energy released when the electron drops to a lower orbit.

The light released is coherent. It is organized -- each photon moves in step

with the others. This means that all of the photons have wave fronts that
launch in unison.

The light is very directional. A laser light has a very tight beam and is very
strong and concentrated. A flashlight, on the other hand, releases light in
many directions, and the light is very weak and diffuse.

To make these three properties occur takes something called stimulated

emission. This does not occur in your ordinary flashlight -- in a flashlight, all of the
atoms release their photons randomly. In stimulated emission, photon emission is
organized.

29
The photon that any atom releases has a certain wavelength that is dependent on
the energy difference between the excited state and the ground state. If this photon
(possessing a certain energy and phase) should encounter another atom that has
an electron in the same excited state, stimulated emission can occur. The first
photon can stimulate or induce atomic emission such that the subsequent emitted
photon (from the second atom) vibrates with the same frequency and direction as
the incoming photon.
The other key to a laser is a pair of mirrors, one at each end of the lasing medium.
Photons, with a very specific wavelength and phase, reflect off the mirrors to travel
back and forth through the lasing medium. In the process, they stimulate other
electrons to make the downward energy jump and can cause the emission of more
photons of the same wavelength and phase. A cascade effect occurs, and soon we
have propagated many, many photons of the same wavelength and phase. The
mirror at one end of the laser is "half-silvered," meaning it reflects some light and
lets some light through. The light that makes it through is the laser light.
You can see all of these components in the figures on the following page, which
illustrate how a Ruby Lasers
A ruby laser consists of a flash tube, a ruby rod and two mirrors (one half-silvered).
The ruby rod is the lasing medium and the flash tube pumps it.

1. The laser in its non-lasing state

30

2. The flash tube fires and injects light into the ruby
rod. The light excites atoms in the ruby.

3. Some of these atoms emit photons.

31

4. Some of these photons run in a direction parallel to

the ruby's axis, so they bounce back and forth off the
mirrors. As they pass through the crystal, they
stimulate emission in other atoms.

How Atoms Work

32

It has been said that during the 20th century, man harnessed the power of the
atom. We made atomic bombs and generated electricity by nuclear power. We even
split the atom into smaller pieces called subatomic particles.
But what exactly is an atom? What is it made of? What does it look like? The pursuit
of the structure of the atom has married many areas of chemistry and physics in
perhaps one of the greatest contributions of modern science. In this article, we will
follow this fascinating story of how discoveries in various fields of science resulted
in our modern view of the atom. We will look at the consequences of knowing the
atom's structure and how this structure will lead to new technologies.

33

In a silicon lattice, all silicon atoms bond perfectly to four neighbors,

leaving no free electrons to conduct electric current. This makes a silicon
crystal an insulator rather than a conductor.
Metals tend to be good conductors of electricity because they usually have "free
electrons" that can move easily between atoms, and electricity involves the flow of
electrons. While silicon crystals look metallic, they are not, in fact, metals. All of the
outer electrons in a silicon crystal are involved inperfect covalent bonds, so they
can't move around. A pure silicon crystal is nearly an insulator -- very little
electricity will flow through it.
But you can change all this
What is an Atom? The Legacy of Ancient Times through the 19th Century
The modern view of an atom has come from many fields of chemistry and physics.
The idea of an atom came from ancient Greek science/philosophy and from the
results of 18th and 19th century chemistry:

concept of the atom

measurements of atomic mass

repeating or periodic relationship between the elements

Concept of the Atom

From the ancient Greeks through today, we have pondered what ordinary matter is
made of. To understand the problem, here is a simple demonstration from a book

34
entitled "The Extraordinary Chemistry of Ordinary Things, 3rd Edition" by Carl H.
Snyder:
1. Take a pile of paper clips (all of the same size and color).
2. Divide the pile into two equal piles.
3. Divide each of the smaller piles into two equal piles.
4. Repeat step 3 until you are down to a pile containing only one paper clip.
That one paper clip still does the job of a paper clip (i.e., hold loose papers
together).
5. Now, take a pair of scissors and cut that one paper clip in half. Can half of the
paper clip do the same job as the single paper clip?
If you do the same thing with any element, you will reach an indivisible part that
has the same properties of the element, like the single paper clip. This indivisible
part is called an atom.
The idea of the atom was first devised by Democritus in 530 B.C. In 1808, an
English school teacher and scientist named John Dalton proposed the modern
atomic theory. Modern atomic theory simply states the following:

Every element is made of atoms - piles of paper clips.

All atoms of any element are the same - all the paper clips in the pile are
the same size and color.

Atoms of different elements are different (size, properties) - like

different sizes and colors of paper clips.

Atoms of different elements can combine to form compounds - you

can link different sizes and colors of paper clips together to make new
structures.

In chemical reactions, atoms are not made, destroyed, or changed - no

new paper clips appear, no paper clips get lost and no paper clips change
from one size/color to another.

In any compound, the numbers and kinds of atoms remain the same the total number and types of paper clips that you start with are the same as
when you finish.

Dalton's atomic theory formed the groundwork of chemistry at that time. Dalton
envisioned atoms as tiny spheres with hooks on them. With these hooks, one atom
could combine with another in definite proportions. But some elements could
combine to make different compounds (e.g., hydrogen + oxygen could make water

35
or hydrogen peroxide). So, he could not say anything about the numbers of each
atom in the molecules of specific substances. Did water have one oxygen with one
hydrogen or one oxygen with two hydrogens? This point was resolved when
chemists figured out how to weigh atoms.

Simplest model of an atom

How Much Do Atoms Weigh?
The ability to weigh atoms came about by an observation from an Italian chemist
named Amadeo Avogadro. Avogadro was working with gases (nitrogen, hydrogen,
oxygen, chlorine) and noticed that when temperature and pressure was the same,
these gases combined in definite volume ratios. For example:

One liter of nitrogen combined with three liters of hydrogen to form ammonia
(NH3)

One liter of hydrogen combined with one liter of chlorine to make hydrogen
chloride (HCl)

Avogadro said that at the same temperature and pressure, equal volumes of the
gases had the same number of molecules. So, by weighing the volumes of gases, he
could determine the ratios of atomic masses. For example, a liter of oxygen
weighed 16 times more than a liter of hydrogen, so an atom of oxygen must be 16
times the mass of an atom of hydrogen. Work of this type resulted in a relative mass
scale for elements in which all of the elements related to carbon (chosen as the
standard -12). Once the relative mass scale was made, later experiments were able
to relate the mass in grams of a substance to the number of atoms and an atomic
mass unit (amu) was found; 1 amu or Dalton is equal to 1.66 x 10-24grams.
At this time, chemists knew the atomic masses of elements and their chemical
properties, and an astonishing phenomenon jumped out at them!
The Properties of Elements Showed a Repeating Pattern
At the time that atomic masses had been discovered, a Russian chemist
named Dimitri Mendeleev was writing a textbook. For his book, he began to
organize elements in terms of their properties by placing the elements and their

36
newly discovered atomic masses in cards. He arranged the elements by increasing
atomic mass and noticed that elements with similar properties appeared at regular
intervals or periods. Mendeleev's table had two problems:

There were some gaps in his "periodic table."

When grouped by properties, most elements had increasing atomic masses,

but some were out of order.

To explain the gaps, Mendeleev said that the gaps were due to undiscovered
elements. In fact, his table successfully predicted the existence of gallium and
germanium, which were discovered later. However, Mendeleev was never able to
explain why some of the elements were out of order or why the elements should
show this periodic behavior. This would have to wait until we knew about the
structure of the atom.
The Structure of the Atom: Early 20th Century Science
To know the structure of the atom, we must know the following:

What are the parts of the atom?

How are these parts arranged?

Near the end of the 19th century, the atom was thought to be nothing more than a
tiny indivisible sphere (Dalton's view). However, a series of discoveries in the fields
of chemistry, electricity and magnetism, radioactivity, and quantum mechanics in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries changed all of that. Here is what these fields
contributed:

The parts of the atom: chemistry and electromagnetism --> electron (first subatomic particle)radioactivity --> nucleus proton neutron

How the atom is arranged - quantum mechanics puts it all

together: atomic spectra ---> Bohr model of the atom wave-particle
duality ---> Quantum model of the atom

Chemistry and Electromagnetism: Discovering the Electron

In the late 19th century, chemists and physicists were studying the relationship
between electricity and matter. They were placing high voltage electric currents
through glass tubes filled with low-pressure gas (mercury, neon, xenon) much
like neon lights. Electric current was carried from one electrode (cathode) through
the gas to the other electrode (anode) by a beam called cathode rays. In 1897, a
British physicist,J. J. Thomson did a series of experiments with the following
results:

37

He found that if the tube was placed within an electric or magnetic field, then
the cathode rays could be deflected or moved (this is how the the
cathode ray tube (CRT) on your television works).

By applying an electric field alone, a magnetic field alone, or both in

combination, Thomson could measure the ratio of the electric charge
to the mass of the cathode rays.

He found the same charge to mass ratio of cathode rays was seen
regardless of what material was inside the tube or what the cathode
was made of.

Thomson concluded the following:

Cathode rays were made of tiny, negatively charged particles, which

he called electrons.

The electrons had to come from inside the atoms of the gas or metal
electrode.

Because the charge to mass ratio was the same for any substance,
the electrons were a basic part of all atoms.

Because the charge to mass ratio of the electron was very high, the electron
must be very small.

Later, an American Physicist named Robert Milikan measured the electrical charge
of an electron. With these two numbers (charge, charge to mass ratio), physicists
calculated the mass of the electron as 9.10 x 10 -28 grams. For comparison, a U.S.
penny has a mass of 2.5 grams; so, 2.7 x 10 27 or 2.7 billion billion billion electrons
would weigh as much as a penny!
Two other conclusions came from the discovery of the electron:

Because the electron was negatively charged and atoms are electrically
neutral, there must be a positive charge somewhere in the atom.

Because electrons are so much smaller than atoms, there must be other,
more massive particles in the atom.

From these results, Thomson proposed a model of the atom that was like a
watermelon. The red part was the positive charge and the seeds were the electrons.

38

Rutherford's view of the atom

Radioactivity: Discovering the Nucleus, the Proton and the Neutron
About the same time as Thomson's experiments with cathode rays, physicists such
as by Henri Becquerel, Marie Curie, Pierre Curie, and Ernest Rutherford were
studying radioactivity. Radioactivity was characterized by three types of emitted
rays.

Alpha particles - positively charged and massive. Ernest Rutherford showed

that these particles were the nucleus of a helium atom.

Beta particles - negatively charged and light (later shown to be electrons).

Gamma rays - neutrally charged and no mass (i.e., energy).

The experiment from radioactivity that contributed most to our knowledge of the
structure of the atom was done by Rutherford and his colleagues. Rutherford
bombarded a thin foil of gold with a beam of alpha particles and looked at the
beams on a fluorescent screen, he noticed the following:

Most of the particles went straight through the foil and struck the screen.

Some (0.1 percent) were deflected or scattered in front (at various angles) of
the foil, while others were scattered behind the foil.

Rutherford concluded that the gold atoms were mostly empty space, which
allowed most of the alpha particles through. However, some small region of the
atom must have been dense enough to deflect or scatter the alpha particle. He
called this dense region the nucleus (see The Rutherford Experiment for an
excellent Java simulation of this important experiment!); the nucleus comprised
most of the mass of the atom. Later, when Rutherford bombarded nitrogen with
alpha particles, a positively charged particle that was lighter than the alpha particle
was emitted. He called these particles protons and realized that they were a
fundamental particle in the nucleus. Protons have a mass of 1.673 x 10 -24 grams,
about 1,835 times larger than an electron!
However, protons could not be the only particle in the nucleus because the number
of protons in any given element (determined by the electrical charge) was less than

39
the weight of the nucleus. Therefore, a third, neutrally charged particle must exist!
It was James Chadwick, a British physicist and co-worker of Rutherford, who
discovered the third subatomic particle, the neutron. Chadwick bombarded
beryllium foil with alpha particles and noticed a neutral radiation coming out. This
neutral radiation could in turn knock protons out of the nuclei of other substances.
Chadwick concluded that this radiation was a stream of neutrally charged particles
with about the same mass as a proton; the neutron has a mass of 1.675 x 10 24
grams.
Now that the parts of the atom were known, how were they arranged to make an
atom? Rutherford's gold foil experiment indicated that the nucleus was in the center
of the atom and that the atom was mostly empty space. So, he envisioned the atom
as the positively charged nucleus in the center with the negatively charged
electrons circling around it much like a planet with moons. Although he had no
evidence that the electrons circled the nucleus, his model seemed reasonable;
however, it presented a problem. As the electrons moved in a circle, they would lose
energy and give off light. The loss of energy would slow the electrons down. Like
any satellite, the slowing electrons would fall into the nucleus. In fact, it was
calculated that a Rutherford atom would last only billionths of a second before
collapsing! Something was missing!

White light passing through a prism.

Quantum Mechanics: Putting It All Together
At the same time that discoveries were being made with radioactivity, physicists
and chemists were studying how light interacted with matter. These studies began
the field ofquantum mechanics and helped solve the structure of the atom.
Quantum Mechanics Sheds Light on the Atom: The Bohr Model
Physicists and chemists studied the nature of the light that was given off when
electric currents were passed through tubes containing gaseous elements
(hydrogen, helium, neon) and when elements were heated (e.g., sodium, potassium,
calcium, etc.) in a flame. They passed the light from these sources through a
spectrometer (a device containing a narrow slit and a glass prism).

40

Continuous spectrum of white light.

Photo courtesy NASA
Now, when you pass sunlight through a prism, you get a continuous spectrum of
colors like a rainbow. However, when light from these various sources was passed
through a prism, they found a dark background with discrete lines.

Hydrogen spectrum
Photo courtesy NASA

Helium spectrum
Photo courtesy NASA
Each element had a unique spectrum and the wavelength of each line within a
spectrum had a specific energy (see How Light Works for details on the relationship
between wavelength and energy).
In 1913, a Danish physicist named Niels Bohr put Rutherford's findings together
with the observed spectra to come up with a new model of the atom in a real leap of
intuition. Bohr suggested that the electrons orbiting an atom could only exist at
certain energy levels (i.e., distances) from the nucleus, not at continuous levels as
might be expected from Rutherford's model. When atoms in the gas tubes absorbed
the energy from the electric current, the electrons became excited and jumped from
low energy levels (close to the nucleus) to high energy levels (farther out from the
nucleus). The excited electrons would fall back to their original levels and emit
energy as light. Because there were specific differences between the energy levels,
only specific wavelengths of light were seen in the spectrum (i.e., lines).

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Bohr models of various atoms.

The major advantage of the Bohr model was that it worked. It explained several
things:
Atomic spectra - discussed above
Periodic behavior of elements - elements with similar properties had similar atomic
spectra.

Each electron orbit of the same size or energy (shell) could only hold so
many electrons. For example, the first shell could hold two electrons, the
second could hold eight electrons, the third could hold 18 electrons, the
fourth 32 and so on until reaching the seventh.

When one shell was filled, electrons were found at higher levels.

Chemical properties were based on the number of electrons in the outermost

shell. Elements with full outer shells do not react. Other elements take or give
up electrons to get a full outer shell.

As it turns out, Bohr's model is also useful for explaining the behavior of lasers,
although these devices were not invented until the middle of the 20th century.

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Bohr's model was the predominant model until new discoveries in quantum
mechanics were made.
QUANTUM MECHANICS
Branch of physics that deals with the motion of particles by their wave properties at
the atomic and subatomic level.
Electrons Can Behave as Waves: The Quantum Model of the Atom
Although the Bohr model adequately explained how atomic spectra worked, there
were several problems that bothered physicists and chemists:

Why should electrons be confined to only specified energy levels?

Why don't electrons give off light all of the time? As electrons change
direction in their circular orbits (i.e., accelerate), they should give off light.

The Bohr model could explain the spectra of atoms with one electron in the
outer shell very well, but was not very good for those with more than one
electron in the outer shell.

Why could only two electrons fit in the first shell and why eight electrons in
each shell after that? What was so special about two and eight?

Obviously, the Bohr model was missing something!

In 1924, a French physicist named Louis de Broglie suggested that, like light,
electrons could act as both particles and waves (see De Broglie Phase Wave
Animation for details). De Broglie's hypothesis was soon confirmed in experiments
that showed electron beams could be diffracted or bent as they passed through a
slit much like light could. So, the waves produced by an electron confined in its orbit
about the nucleus sets up a standing wave of specific wavelength, energy and
frequency (i.e., Bohr's energy levels) much like a guitar string sets up a standing
wave when plucked.
Another question quickly followed de Broglie's idea. If an electron traveled as a
wave, could you locate the precise position of the electron within the wave? A
German physicist, Werner Heisenberg, answered no in what he called
the uncertainty principle:

To view an electron in its orbit, you must shine a wavelength of light on it that
is smaller than the electron's wavelength.

This small wavelength of light has a high energy.

The electron will absorb that energy.

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The absorbed energy will change the electron's position.

We can never know both the momentum and position of an electron in an atom.
Therefore, Heisenberg said that we shouldn't view electrons as moving in welldefined orbits about the nucleus!
With de Broglie's hypothesis and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in mind, an
Austrian physicist named Erwin Schrodinger derived a set of equations or wave
functions in 1926 for electrons. According to Schrodinger, electrons confined in
their orbits would set up standing waves and you could describe only the probability
of where an electron could be. The distributions of these probabilities formed
regions of space about the nucleus were called orbitals. Orbitals could be
described as electron density clouds . The densest area of the cloud is where you
have the greatest probability of finding the electron and the least dense area is
where you have the lowest probability of finding the electron.

Quantum model of a sodium atom.

Wave Functions
The wave function of each electron can be described as a set of three quantum
numbers:

Principal number (n) - describes the energy level.

Azimuthal number (l) - how fast the electron moves in its orbit (angular
momentum); like how fast a CD spins (rpm). This is related to the shape of
the orbital.

Magnetic (m) - its orientation in space.

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It was later suggested that no two electrons could be in the exact same state, so a
fourth quantum number was added. This number was related to the direction that
the electron spins while it is moving in its orbit (i.e., clockwise, and
counterclockwise). Only two electrons could share the same orbital, one spinning
clockwise and the other spinning counterclockwise.
The orbitals had different shapes and maximum numbers at any level:

s (sharp) - spherical (max = 1)

p (principal) - dumb-bell shaped (max = 3)

d (diffuse) - four-lobe-shaped (max = 5)

f (fundamental) - six-lobe shaped (max = 7)

The names of the orbitals came from names of atomic spectral features before
quantum mechanics was formally invented. Each orbital can hold only two
electrons. Also, the orbitals have a specific order of filling, generally:
However, there is some overlap (any chemistry textbook has the details).
The resulting model of the atom is called the quantum model of the atom.
Sodium has 11 electrons distributed in the following energy levels:
1. one s orbital - two electrons
2. one s orbital - two electrons and three p orbitals (two electrons each)
3. one s orbital - one electron
Right now, the quantum model is the most realistic vision of the overall structure of
the atom. It explains much of what we know about chemistry and physics. Here are
some examples:

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The modern periodic table of the elements (elements are ordered based
on atomic number rather than mass).

Chemistry: The Periodic Table - the Table's pattern and arrangement reflects
the arrangement of electrons in the atom. Elements have different atomic
numbers - the number of protons or electrons increases up the table as
electrons fill the shells. Elements have different atomic masses - the number
of protons plus neutrons increases up the table. Rows - elements of each row
have the same number of energy levels (shells). Columns - elements have
the same number of electrons in the outermost energy level or shell (one to
eight). Chemical reactions - exchange of electrons between various atoms
(giving, taking, or sharing). Exchange involves electrons in the outermost
energy level in attempts to fill the outermost shell (i.e., most stable form of
the atom).

Physics Radioactivity - changes in the nucleus (i.e., decay) emit radioactive

particles. Nuclear reactors - splitting the nucleus (fission) Nuclear bombs splitting the nucleus (fission) or forming a nucleus (fusion)Atomic spectra caused by excited electrons changing energy levels (absorption or emission
of energy in the form of light photons).

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STM image (7 nm x 7 nm) of a single zigzag chain of cesium atoms (red) on

a gallium-arsenside surface (blue)
Can We See Atoms?
Atoms are so small that we cannot see them with our eyes (i.e., microscopic). To
give you a feel for some sizes, these are approximate diameters of various atoms
and particles:

atom = 1 x 10-10 meters

nucleus = 1 x 10-15 to 1 x 10

neutron or proton = 1 x 10-15 meters

electron - not known exactly, but thought to be on the order of 1 x 10 18

meters

-14

meters

You cannot see an atom with a light microscope. However, in 1981, a type of
microscope called a scanning tunneling microscope (STM)was developed. The
STM consists of the following:

A very small, sharp tip that conducts electricity (probe)

A rapid piezoelectric scanning device to which the tip is mounted

Electronic components to supply current to the tip, control the scanner and
accept the signals from the motion sensor

Computer to control the system and do data analysis (data collection,

processing, display)

The STM works like this:

A current is supplied to the tip (probe) while the scanner rapidly moves the
tip across the surface of a conducting sample.

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When the tip encounters an atom, the flow of electrons between the atom
and the tip changes.

The computer registers the change in current with the x,y-position of the
atom.

The scanner continues to position the tip over each x,y-point on the sample
surface, registering a current for each point.

The computer collects the data and plots a map of current over the surface
that corresponds to a map of the atomic positions.

The process is much like an old phonograph where the needle is the tip and the
grooves in the vinyl record are the atoms. The STM tip moves over the atomic
contour of the surface, using tunneling current as a sensitive detector of atomic
position.
The STM and new variations of this microscope allow us to see atoms. In addition,
the STM can be used to manipulate atoms as shown here:

Atoms can be positioned on a surface using the STM tip, creating a custom
pattern on the surface.
In summary, science in the 20th century has revealed the structure of the atom.
Scientists are now conducting experiments to reveal details of the structure of the
nucleus and the forces that hold it together.