by

Carl Martikean

This website hosted by the Illinois Institute of Technology

Objectives:

1. Identify the properties of the nucleus of an atom
2. Explain why some nuclei are unstable
3. Calculate the binding energy of various nuclei
4. Perform an experiment that simulates a linear accelerator.

Preliminaries:

1. Rutherford’s experiment lead to the conclusion that all of an atoms positive and most of its mass lie are concentrated in the nucleus.
2. The nucleus has a radius of no greater than about
   10^-14 m.
3. The convenient unit of length in nuclear physics is the femtometer (fm). Sometimes this is called a fermi.
4. The length of this unit is 10^-15 m.