  Atomic nuclei are complex strongly interacting systems and their exact
theoretical description is a long-standing challenge. An approximate
description of nuclei can be achieved by separating its short and long range
structure. This separation of scales stands at the heart of the nuclear shell
model and effective field theories that describe the long-range structure of
the nucleus using a mean- field approximation. We present here an effective
description of the complementary short-range structure using contact terms and
stylized two-body asymptotic wave functions. The possibility to extract the
nuclear contacts from experimental data is presented. Regions in the two-body
momentum distribution dominated by high-momentum, close-proximity, nucleon
pairs are identified and compared to experimental data. The amount of
short-range correlated (SRC) nucleon pairs is determined and compared to
measurements. Non-combinatorial isospin symmetry for SRC pairs is identified.
The obtained one-body momentum distributions indicate dominance of SRC pairs
above the nuclear Fermi-momentum.
