Physics A2 help-binding energy

jewii

jewii

jewii

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12 Jul 2010
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i understand how fe is the most stable atom in the universe as it has the highest binding energy.
but for the general rule is "the higher the binding energy, the more stable the atom"

why is this general rule so?

because surely it can always spontanously decay to a higher binding energy what ever the current binding energy is until it reaches fe thus only fe can be the true stable atom.
 
thanks for answer.

heres the problem on a exercise question i think it was 1 marker but still, we had worked out a the binding energy per a nucleon to be around 8 Mev, the question asked, do you think the nucleii will be stable. the answer was yes as it has a very high binding energy.

this is all well but why does a higher binding energy per nucleon make a atom more stable? oviously if we wanted to seperate all the protons and neturons from a nucleii with 50 nucleons, it would be harder as we'll need more energy compared to a different combinations of a set of 50 nucleons. i.e. 50 hydragen atoms.

what do you think the stability part refers to?
 
ok time is ticking on, i'll rephrase the question.

theres this rule "the higher the binding energy per nucleon, the more stable the atom" how does a higher binding energy per nucleon make it more stable?


what i think the stability means; is it likely to decay anytime soon and change into another isotope?
 
GreatAuk said:
The number of nucleons in it. Apparently the nucleons aren't compressible, so the volume of the nucleus goes up linearly with the number of nucleons. (So diameter with cube root of nucleons). They proved this using electron diffraction, which was used to find the diameter of each nucleus, and the trend they found was diameter increases with cube root of nucleons, meaning density doesn't change however many nucleons you have.

I'm looking forwards to my physics on Monday - love all this stuff...
Click to expand...

yup but the reason why they don't compress is because the strong force starts replusing the nucleons when they get to a certain distance thus the volume is proportional to the number of nucleons. and as volume is proportional to R^3.
R=k*A^(1/3)

where K is the r0 constant.

sorry for late replies, the subcription email didn't report properly.
 
thanks got them.

I'm semi-looking forward to the paper, the stuff is easy but those 2*6 marker questions where they assess your quality of writing is making me scared lol :(
 
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