NATS 1945 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Atomic Number, Thorium
31 Oct 2017
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Document Summary
Nuclear physics: means the processes that all involve the nuclei of atoms. If you have a lump of natural, unprocessed, uranium, mined from the earth, you will always find that 99. 3% of it will be in the form of u238 the 238 denotes the atoms total number of nucleons. Since uranium is the 90 second element in the periodic table, it means it has 92 protons. Therefore, since u238 and only 92 of those are protons, then the remaining must be neutrons. Nucleons- particles in an atoms nucleus, - protons, neutrons. Natural u therefore, typically has way more n than p. This is not a particularly stable way for an atom to exist, the contents of the nucleus are quite unbalanced, and because of this the isotopes of u are radioactive. Radioactive substance: has atoms which naturally decay due to an imbalance among the forces between nucleons. Radioactivity is the spontaneous breaking apart of an atoms nucleus.
