How many neutrons, protons, and electrons are in carbon? What is the mass in grams of 44.5 mol Xe? Why is Avogadro's number called the mole? Why does one multiply the mass of one element in a given compound by the moles of that compound to find the amount of the elements present in...
Control rods made of materials such as cadmium and boron can be raised or lowered into the reactor to soak up neutrons and slow down or speed up the chain reaction. Water is pumped through the reactor to collect the heat energy that the chain reaction produces. It constantly flows around a...
This process of decay can be greatly accelerated in what is known as a chain reaction. Instead of disintegrating naturally and slowly, the atoms are forcibly split by bombardment with neutrons. Chain Reactions A blow from a single neutron is enough to split the less-stable U-235 atom, ...
In PGAA, a beam of neutrons is often extracted from through a reactor beam port. This means that the neutron flux is of the order of 1 million times lower than in the reactor, but it means that the detectors can be placed very close to the sample. In many cases, this will offset th...
All matter is composed of atoms. Atoms, in turn, are composed of positively charged protons, negatively charged electrons, and neutral neutrons. The protons and neutrons, which are of approximately equal size, comprise the close-packed central "nucleus" of the atom, where almost all of the mas...
How many neutrons, protons, and electrons are in carbon? How can I tell if a molecule is polar or non-polar? For a one-electron atom or ion, spin-orbit coupling splits all states except s states into doublets. Why are s states exceptions to this rul...
This is how electromagnets are made to work. This will be important to keep in mind as we zoom into the structure of atoms. Around the nucleus of the atom, where the protons and neutrons live, there are electrons whizzing around. We used to think that they had certain circular orbits ...
Neutron Variation in Isotopes One might anticipate that, if so tiny an atom as helium can have as many as two extra neutrons and remain stable, surely larger atoms with considerably more protons should be able to vary by many more than two neutrons. Is this a valid supposition? Not really...
The formula for calculating critical mass is: mc^2 = (N/A) * E, where m is the mass of the material, c is the speed of light, N is the number of neutrons released per fission, A is the atomic mass of the material, and E is the energy released per fission. Are there any fact...
If you know the atomic number and the mass number of an isotope of an element, how can you determine the number of protons and neutrons? How do you tell how many valence electrons there are in an element by looking at the periodic table? How do the electrons help in pre...