Thursday, June 6, 2013

What Particles Are In An Atom Nucleus

What Particles Are In An Atom Nucleus.Fundamental Particles: The atom not only contains electron’s, protons and neutrons but a large number of other subatomic particles. More than one hundred such particles have been discovered by the scientists to be present in,the atom. Some only exist at high energy in atomic reactions. Many particles like protons and neutrons which were previously thought the ultimate fundamental particles have been proved to be composed of more
-fundamental particles. Most of the particles are also related with forces.
The theory of quantum mechanics views all forces between particles as being the result of the exchange of some intermediary particles that carry the forces. Because of the very short range of the strong nuclear forces, the exchange particle carrying it must be relatively massive, about 200 times that of an electron. The prediction leads to the identification of the exchange particles called mesons. They are so named because their masses lie between those of an electron and a proton.
Mesons are continually being exchanged between the particles in the nucleus, as are the mass less protons, which are the carriers of the electrostatic force. Thus, the nucleus is in a state of unceasing seething (agitating) activity, with particles appearing and disappearing, but with the protons and neutrons remaining relatively unchanged.
Physicists have reached the conclusion (based on experimental evidence) that protons, neutrons and mesons are themselves made up of even more basic particles known as quarks. If such particles do exist, it is theoretically possible to generate the basic properties of many subatomic particles simply by combining a number of different types of quarks. But quarks have to have some odd characteristics to do this. For example they must have charges that are multiples of one-third of the charge on an electron (which was believed to be a unit charge and indivisible).

Quarks are classified as up quarks and down quarks or they are given imaginary colors. It is found that a proton is composed of 3 quarks and similarly a neutron is composed of 3 quarks but different from those of proton. A proton contains two up quarks and one down quark; a neutron contains two down and one up.

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