From the figure it is seen that f varies in a systematic manner with the mass number A For very light nuclei and very heavy nuclei f is positive (20>A>180) For nuclei with mass numbers between 20 and 180, f is negative
Binding fraction f B If the B.E EB of a nucleus divided by the mass number A, we get the binding energy per nucleon in the nucleus which is known as binding fraction f B Here we assumed that the masses are expressed in energy unit so that c 2 has been omitted. Binding fraction f B of different nuclei represent relative strength of their binding
Important points about f B 1. f B For very light nuclei is very small and rises rapidly with A attaining the a value of 8 MeV/nucleon for A~20, then it rises slowly with attains 8.7 MeV/nucleon for at A~56 for higher it decreases slowly 2. For 20<A<180 the variation of f B is very slight and it may be constant in this region having a mean value 8.5 MeV/nucleon 3. For very heavy nuclei A>180 f B decreases monotonically with the increase of A, for heaviest nuclei f B is about 7.5 MeV/nucleon 4. For very light nuclei there are rapid fluctuations in f B, in particular for even-even nuclei for which A=4n, n is an integer. similar but less prominent peaks are observed at values of Z or N=20,28,50,82,126 magic numbers, peaks means greater stability
We can write M H =1+f H and M n =1+f n, where f H =0.007825 u and f n =0.008665 u
The first term on the r.h.s of latest eq. is almost constant specially for lowe A when Z=N=A/2 So, we can see that binding fraction and packing fraction are proportional.
Nuclear size 1. Rutherford`s experiment of α -particle scattering gives us an idea about the smallness of the nuclear size, he estimated the values of nuclear radius R for a few light elements, these were of the order of a few times 10 -5 m, 2. these values were not very accurate,in later years more accurate methods have been developed 3. We assume that the nucleus has a spherical shape, this is expected because of the short range character for nuclear force. However small departures have been observed, this is inferred from the existence of electric quadruple moment of these nuclei which is zero for spherical nuclei, however it is small.
Nuclear charge It has been that nuclear charge has been uniformly distributed, experiments show that this is very nearly, so the nuclear charge density c is approximately constant, experimental evidences also show that the distribution of nuclear matter is nearly uniform, so that the nuclear matter density m is also approximately constant, since nuclear mass is almost linearly proportional to the mass number A, this mean m ~ A/V= constant, i.e., the nuclear volume V=(4/3) R 3 A R A 1/3 R=r o A 1/3 where r o is a constant known as nuclear radius parameter
Nuclear radius R Radius of the nuclear mass distribution, and we can talk about radius of nuclear charge distribution, since the nuclear charge parameter Z is almost proportional to the mass number A an the nuclear charge density c is approximately the same throughout nuclear volume V Due to the strong interaction the mass radius and charge radius may be expected to be very nearly
Nuclear Spin Non relativistically moving nucleons have a spin ½. (i.e. s p =s n =1/2) in quantum mechanics the spin of p is represented by a vector operator S p which have the eigen values of And of And similarly for S n.In addition the nucleons may also have orbital angular momentum by virtue of their motion in the nucleus this is represented by an angular momentum quantum number L=0,1,2,……..for each nucleon The sum total of the spin and orbital angular momenta of the nucleons, the total intrinsic angular momentum of the nucleus is referred to as the nuclear spin and the associated quantum number is denoted by J=L+S, odd A nuclei have J=1/2,3/2,5/2,..and even A nuclei have J=0,1,2…..and this agrees with experimental measurements of nuclear spin, in addition it is found for even-even nuclei,the nuclear ground state spin is always J=0