Simulation of Newton's Cradle, a device consisting of several steel balls suspended from a cage. Uses the 2D Rigid Body Physics Engine. Each ball acts like an individual pendulum. At rest all the balls are touching.
It was essential to remind people that all the matter around us has one base unit: the atom. Dalton thought it was important to use his system of symbols for the representation of chemical elements because it was helpful to remember exactly which atoms lay at the basic structure of the matter. It was easy for people to use symbols for elements in chemical formulas. He pictured the atoms as small balls and this is the same way that he depicted models of elements and compounds.
In A New System of Chemical Philosophy, Dalton also wrote about his experiments proving that atoms consistently combine in simple ratios. What that meant was that the molecules of an element are always made up of the same proportions, with the exception of water molecules.