August 3, 2016 Wednesday
Today was the bail hearing of another co-accused Sajan.
Sajan Rajukumar Singh.
The hearing was short.
I cannot thank Bits enough for the support he is showing to me.
I would be all at sea without his guidance.
Mercifully enough, today my insurance company reimbursed my
entire medical expense that I had to bear at the Nanavati Hospital.
I had submitted my claim papers on July 16, 2016.
In astonishing 17 days!
Now what is the idea behind this so called magic numbers when it comes to the nuclei of elements.
Well...
Experimentally when in the labs people like you tried to knock of either a proton or neutron, a lot of energy was needed.
I mean...
Say you wish to knock if an electron orbiting around the nucleus of Hydrogen atom.
You would need a photon whose energy would amount to some electronvolts or eV (1.6 x 10^-19J).
In fact this is the principle behind the photoelectric effect and the dawn of quantum mechanics.
But if you wanted to knock off a proton or a neutron from the nucleus of any atom, you would need lots of energy.
In the range of millions of ev.
Why?
Because the protons and neutrons are held tightly to each other with a strong nuclear force.
It is a powerfully attractive force at the extremely short distances of femtometers (I am sure all ophthalmologists are very familiar with the term femto)
1 femtometer or fm =
1.0 X 10^-15 meters.
This strong nuclear force can be also seen as binding energy per nucleon.
The people who love blasting away at atomic nuclei discovered much to their surprise that elements with certain atomic numbers are very stable.
Meaning they have far more average binding energy per nucleon (or a stronger nuclear force) than one would expect and hence they are more stable against nuclear decay (like beta decay or fission etc.).
These numbers turned out to be
2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82 and 126 (notice all are even).
The magical numbers!
Lead if you recall has an atomic number of 82 and is incredibly stable inspite being so heavy.
Theoretically it can undergo alpha decay to isotopes of mercury (atomic number 80) with release of energy;
but it would take over 10^100 years.
Why these atomic numbers result in nuclear stability lead to a whole novel interpretation of atomic nucleus structure.
That is a topic for another night.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Today was the bail hearing of another co-accused Sajan.
Sajan Rajukumar Singh.
The hearing was short.
I cannot thank Bits enough for the support he is showing to me.
I would be all at sea without his guidance.
Mercifully enough, today my insurance company reimbursed my
entire medical expense that I had to bear at the Nanavati Hospital.
I had submitted my claim papers on July 16, 2016.
In astonishing 17 days!
Now what is the idea behind this so called magic numbers when it comes to the nuclei of elements.
Well...
Experimentally when in the labs people like you tried to knock of either a proton or neutron, a lot of energy was needed.
I mean...
Say you wish to knock if an electron orbiting around the nucleus of Hydrogen atom.
You would need a photon whose energy would amount to some electronvolts or eV (1.6 x 10^-19J).
In fact this is the principle behind the photoelectric effect and the dawn of quantum mechanics.
But if you wanted to knock off a proton or a neutron from the nucleus of any atom, you would need lots of energy.
In the range of millions of ev.
Why?
Because the protons and neutrons are held tightly to each other with a strong nuclear force.
It is a powerfully attractive force at the extremely short distances of femtometers (I am sure all ophthalmologists are very familiar with the term femto)
1 femtometer or fm =
1.0 X 10^-15 meters.
This strong nuclear force can be also seen as binding energy per nucleon.
The people who love blasting away at atomic nuclei discovered much to their surprise that elements with certain atomic numbers are very stable.
Meaning they have far more average binding energy per nucleon (or a stronger nuclear force) than one would expect and hence they are more stable against nuclear decay (like beta decay or fission etc.).
These numbers turned out to be
2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82 and 126 (notice all are even).
The magical numbers!
Lead if you recall has an atomic number of 82 and is incredibly stable inspite being so heavy.
Theoretically it can undergo alpha decay to isotopes of mercury (atomic number 80) with release of energy;
but it would take over 10^100 years.
Why these atomic numbers result in nuclear stability lead to a whole novel interpretation of atomic nucleus structure.
That is a topic for another night.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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