Prout's hypothesis
Prout's hypothesis proper noun: an early 19th-century attempt to explain the existence of the various chemical elements: the hypothesis that, since the atomic weights for known elements appeared to be whole multiples of the atomic weight of hydrogen, the hydrogen atom was the only truly fundamental object, and the atoms of other elements were actually groupings of various numbers of hydrogen atoms.
Proper noun
Prout's hypothesis
- An early 19th-century attempt to explain the existence of the various chemical elements: the hypothesis that, since the atomic weights for known elements appeared to be whole multiples of the atomic weight of hydrogen, the hydrogen atom was the only truly fundamental object, and the atoms of other elements were actually groupings of various numbers of hydrogen atoms.
Origin of Prout's hypothesis
Named after the English chemist William Prout.
Questions about Prout's hypothesis
- What does Prout's hypothesis mean?
- Prout's hypothesis means an early 19th-century attempt to explain the existence of the various chemical elements: the hypothesis that, since the atomic weights for known elements appeared to be whole multiples of the atomic weight of hydrogen, the hydrogen atom was the only truly fundamental object, and the atoms of other elements were actually groupings of various numbers of hydrogen atoms.
- What part of speech is Prout's hypothesis?
- Prout's hypothesis is a proper noun.
Words near Prout's hypothesis in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Prout's hypothesis (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “Prout's hypothesis.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/prout%27s_hypothesis. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.