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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).
All elements have multiple isotopes, variants with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons. For example, carbon has three naturally occurring isotopes: all of its atoms have six protons and most have six neutrons as well, but about one per cent have seven neutrons, and a very small fraction have eight neutrons. Isotopes are ...
Examples include carbon-14, nitrogen-15, and oxygen-16 in the table above. Isobars are nuclides with the same number of nucleons (i.e. mass number) but different numbers of protons and neutrons. Isobars neighbor each other diagonally from lower-left to upper-right. Examples include carbon-14, nitrogen-14, and oxygen-14 in the table above.
The mass of the neutron is greater than that of the proton by 1.293 32 MeV/c 2, [25] hence the neutron's mass provides energy sufficient for the creation of the proton, electron, and anti-neutrino. In the decay process, the proton, electron, and electron anti-neutrino conserve the energy, charge, and lepton number of the neutron. [26]
Beta decay (and electron capture): these processes are regulated by the weak force, and result from a transformation of a neutron into a proton, or a proton into a neutron. The neutron to proton transition is accompanied by the emission of an electron and an antineutrino, while proton to neutron transition (except in electron capture) causes ...
A 1906 proposal to change to electrion failed because Hendrik Lorentz preferred to keep electron. [25] [26] The word electron is a combination of the words electric and ion. [27] The suffix -on which is now used to designate other subatomic particles, such as a proton or neutron, is in turn derived from electron. [28] [29]
The discovery of proton and neutron demonstrated that an atom was divisible; this rendered Lavoisier's definition of a chemical element obsolete. A chemical element is defined today as a species of atoms with a consistent number of protons [108] and that number is now known to be precisely the atomic number of an element.
Electron scattering techniques have yielded clues as to the internal structure of light nuclides. Proton-neutron pairs experience a strongly repulsive component of the nuclear force within ≈ 0.5 fm (see "Space between nucleons" above). As nucleons cannot pack any closer, nearly all nuclei have the same central density. [6]