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Neutrons are required for the stability of nuclei, with the exception of the single-proton hydrogen nucleus. Neutrons are produced copiously in nuclear fission and fusion. They are a primary contributor to the nucleosynthesis of chemical elements within stars through fission, fusion, and neutron capture processes.
The neutron number (symbol N) is the number of neutrons in a nuclide. Atomic number (proton number) plus neutron number equals mass number: Z + N = A. The difference between the neutron number and the atomic number is known as the neutron excess: D = N − Z = A − 2Z.
Quantity (common name/s) (Common) symbol/s Defining equation SI units Dimension Number of atoms N = Number of atoms remaining at time t. N 0 = Initial number of atoms at time t = 0
An example is calcium-40, with 20 neutrons and 20 protons, which is the heaviest stable isotope made of the same number of protons and neutrons. Both calcium-48 and nickel-48 are doubly magic because calcium-48 has 20 protons and 28 neutrons while nickel-48 has 28 protons and 20 neutrons. Calcium-48 is very neutron-rich for such a relatively ...
For a nucleus with A nucleons, including Z protons and N neutrons, a semi-empirical formula for the binding energy (E B) per nucleon is: = / / / where the coefficients are given by: =; =; =; =; =. The first term a {\displaystyle a} is called the saturation contribution and ensures that the binding energy per nucleon is the same for all nuclei ...
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 ...
The stable nucleus has approximately a constant density and therefore the nuclear radius R can be approximated by the following formula, = / where A = Atomic mass number (the number of protons Z, plus the number of neutrons N) and r 0 = 1.25 fm = 1.25 × 10 −15 m.
^c For free neutrons; in most common nuclei, neutrons are stable. The masses of their antiparticles are assumed to be identical, and no experiments have refuted this to date. Current experiments show any relative difference between the masses of the proton and antiproton must be less than 2 × 10 −9 [ PDG 1 ] and the difference between the ...