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RE: Live from CERN - the magics behind the doubly-magic atomic nuclei [also in French: la magie des noyaux atomiques doublement magiques]

in #science8 years ago

Comments: This was a great post. I don't recall having learned about there being two separate P-orbital energy states. We always in chemistry classes at least lumped them together as one. I also didn't know the source of how the magic numbers were determined. I knew about them and nuclear stability when nucleon numbers are equivalent but didn't know that they came from summing the number of nucleons equivalent to electrons present in the various energy shells. Learned quite a bit here!

Corrections: "Helium-4 is the must abundant nucleus in the universe" must should be most.

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The separation of the P-wave comes from spin-orbit effects. As for any level different from a s-level whose orbital quantum number vanishes.

Concerning the orbit stuff, you may want to see the model as neutrons and protons orbiting around the center of the nucleus. Thanks to Pauli exclusion principle, they will never collider (as all the lowest energy levels are taken, there is no way for them to jump to another state without an external source of energy).

PS: thanks for the typo ;)