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A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol p, H +, or 1 H + with a positive electric charge of +1 e (elementary charge).Its mass is slightly less than the mass of a neutron and approximately 1836 times the mass of an electron (the proton-to-electron mass ratio).
The atomic mass mostly comes from the combined mass of the protons and neutrons in the nucleus, with minor contributions from the electrons and nuclear binding energy. [1] The atomic mass of atoms, ions, or atomic nuclei is slightly less than the sum of the masses of their constituent protons, neutrons, and electrons, due to (per E = mc 2).
Except for the proton and neutron, all other hadrons are unstable and decay into other particles in microseconds or less. A proton is made of two up quarks and one down quark, while the neutron is made of two down quarks and one up quark. These commonly bind together into an atomic nucleus, e.g. a helium-4 nucleus is composed of two protons and ...
Hartree defined units based on three physical constants: [1]: 91 Both in order to eliminate various universal constants from the equations and also to avoid high powers of 10 in numerical work, it is convenient to express quantities in terms of units, which may be called 'atomic units', defined as follows:
The new unit was named the "unified atomic mass unit" and given a new symbol "u", to replace the old "amu" that had been used for the oxygen-based unit. [18] However, the old symbol "amu" has sometimes been used, after 1961, to refer to the new unit, particularly in lay and preparatory contexts.
One dalton is approximately the mass of one a single proton or neutron. [2] The unified atomic mass unit has a value of 1.660 538 921 (73) × 10 −27 kg. [3] The amu without the "unified" prefix is an obsolete unit based on oxygen, which was replaced in 1961.
A smaller fraction (about four per million) of free neutrons decay in so-called "two-body (neutron) decays", in which a proton, electron and antineutrino are produced as usual, but the electron fails to gain the 13.6 eV necessary energy to escape the proton (the ionization energy of hydrogen), and therefore simply remains bound to it, forming a ...
For example, uranium-238 usually decays by alpha decay, where the nucleus loses two neutrons and two protons in the form of an alpha particle. Thus the atomic number and the number of neutrons each decrease by 2 ( Z : 92 → 90, N : 146 → 144), so that the mass number decreases by 4 ( A = 238 → 234); the result is an atom of thorium-234 and ...