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Helium is composed of two electrons bound by the electromagnetic force to a nucleus containing two protons along with two neutrons, depending on the isotope, held together by the strong force. Unlike for hydrogen , a closed-form solution to the Schrödinger equation for the helium atom has not been found.
Some stable helium-3 (two protons and one neutron) is produced in fusion reactions from hydrogen, though its estimated abundance in the universe is about 10 −5 relative to helium-4. [ 92 ] Binding energy per nucleon of common isotopes.
Helium-2, 2 He, is extremely unstable. Its nucleus, a diproton, consists of two protons with no neutrons.According to theoretical calculations, it would be much more stable (but still β + decay to deuterium) if the strong force were 2% greater. [18]
Helium-3 (3 He [1] [2] see also helion) is a light, stable isotope of helium with two protons and one neutron. (In contrast, the most common isotope, helium-4, has two protons and two neutrons.) Helium-3 and protium (ordinary hydrogen) are the only stable nuclides with more protons than neutrons. It was discovered in 1939.
The helium atom. Depicted are the nucleus (pink) and the electron cloud distribution (black). The nucleus (upper right) in helium-4 is in reality spherically symmetric and closely resembles the electron cloud, although for more complicated nuclei this is not always the case. Helium-4 (4 He) is a stable isotope of the element helium.
A chemical element, often simply called an element, is a type of atom which has a specific number of protons in its atomic nucleus (i.e., a specific atomic number, or Z). [ 1 ] The definitive visualisation of all 118 elements is the periodic table of the elements , whose history along the principles of the periodic law was one of the founding ...
The number of protons in an atom (which Rutherford called the "atomic number" [27] ... which is a helium nucleus consisting of two protons and two neutrons.
The darker more stable isotope region departs from the line of protons (Z) = neutrons (N), as the element number Z becomes larger. This is a list of chemical elements by the stability of their isotopes. Of the first 82 elements in the periodic table, 80 have isotopes considered to be stable. [1] Overall, there are 251 known stable isotopes in ...