Nuclear cartography: patterns in binding energies and subatomic structure

Nuclear masses and binding energies are some of the first nuclear properties met in high school physics, and can be used to introduce radioactive decays, fusion, and fission. With relatively little extension, they can also illustrate fundamental concepts in nuclear physics, such as shell structure a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physics education 2017-11, Vol.52 (6), p.64002
Main Authors: Simpson, E C, Shelley, M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Binding energy
Cartography
Charts
Energy
Foreign Countries
Higher Education
Manipulative Materials
Nuclear Physics
Nuclear properties
Nuclides
Science Instruction
Scientific Concepts
Shells (structural forms)
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Summary:Nuclear masses and binding energies are some of the first nuclear properties met in high school physics, and can be used to introduce radioactive decays, fusion, and fission. With relatively little extension, they can also illustrate fundamental concepts in nuclear physics, such as shell structure and pairing, and to discuss how the elements around us were formed in stars. One way of visualising these nuclear properties is through the nuclide chart, which maps all nuclides as a function of their proton and neutron numbers. Here we use the nuclide chart to illustrate various aspects of nuclear physics, and present 3D visualisations of it produced as part of the binding blocks project.
ISSN:0031-9120
1361-6552
DOI:10.1088/1361-6552/aa811a