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The components of an atom and of a nucleus have varying densities. The proton is not a fundamental particle, being composed of quark–gluon matter. Its size is approximately 10 −15 meters and its density 10 18 kg/m 3. The descriptive term nuclear density is also applied to situations where similarly high densities occur, such as within ...
The adoption of the term "nucleus" to atomic theory, however, was not immediate. In 1916, for example, Gilbert N. Lewis stated, in his famous article The Atom and the Molecule, that "the atom is composed of the kernel and an outer atom or shell." [12] Similarly, the term kern meaning kernel is used for nucleus in German and Dutch.
The atomic nucleus is a bound system of protons and neutrons. The spatial extent and shape of the nucleus depend not only on the size and shape of discrete nucleons, but also on the distance between them (the inter-nucleon distance). (Other factors include spin, alignment, orbital motion, and the local nuclear environment (see EMC effect).)
An atom consists of a nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished from each other by the number of protons that are in their atoms. For example, any atom that contains 11 protons is sodium, and any atom that contains 29 protons is copper.
In chemistry, a pure element means a substance whose atoms all (or in practice almost all) have the same atomic number, or number of protons. Nuclear scientists, however, define a pure element as one that consists of only one isotope. [18] For example, a copper wire is 99.99% chemically pure if 99.99% of its atoms are copper, with 29 protons each.
In this picture, the protons and neutrons are shown as distinct, which is the conventional view in chemistry, for example. But in an actual nucleus, as understood by modern nuclear physics, the nucleons are partially delocalized and organize themselves according to the laws of quantum chromodynamics. In physics and chemistry, a nucleon is ...
In chemistry, the term proton refers to the hydrogen ion, H +. Since the atomic number of hydrogen is 1, a hydrogen ion has no electrons and corresponds to a bare nucleus, consisting of a proton (and 0 neutrons for the most abundant isotope protium 1 1 H). The proton is a "bare charge" with only about 1/64,000 of the radius of a hydrogen atom ...
The independent particle model and mean field theories (we shall see that there exist several variants) have a great success in describing the properties of the nucleus starting from an effective interaction or an effective potential, thus are a basic part of atomic nucleus theory.