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Binding Energy (Isaac Physics J4.8 Part A)

I've been attempting to answer the question below, however I am unsure where I have made a mistake in the workings.

https://isaacphysics.org/questions/phys19_j4_q8?board=phys19_j4&stage=a_level

I started by using the values in the table to calculate the mass of the constituents of the atom to be 3.935X10^-25. This leads to a mass defect of 3.18X10^-27.

II then converted the value into atomic units (which is 1.915u) then multiplied by 931.5MeV (which is 1783.7Mev). As the question asks for Binding Energy per Nucleon this gives an answer of 7.590Mev nucleon^-1 which is said to be incorrect. If anyone how to answer this question could you help me please?
Original post by OluSeye1
I've been attempting to answer the question below, however I am unsure where I have made a mistake in the workings.

https://isaacphysics.org/questions/phys19_j4_q8?board=phys19_j4&stage=a_level

I started by using the values in the table to calculate the mass of the constituents of the atom to be 3.935X10^-25. This leads to a mass defect of 3.18X10^-27.

II then converted the value into atomic units (which is 1.915u) then multiplied by 931.5MeV (which is 1783.7Mev). As the question asks for Binding Energy per Nucleon this gives an answer of 7.590Mev nucleon^-1 which is said to be incorrect. If anyone how to answer this question could you help me please?


Did you subtract the mass of 92 electrons from mass of U-235 atom?
Reply 2
Original post by thomas.rhett
Did you subtract the mass of 92 electrons from mass of U-235 atom?


I had not but am still getting incorrect answers. I firstly assumed that the mass of the constituents stays the same and the mass of just the nucleus for U-235 would be 3.9021X10^-25. The mass defect would then be 3.264x10^-27 giving a binding energy of 1835.8MeV. The binding energy per nucleon is now 7.812MeV nucleon^-1 which the website says was incorrect.

I tried again without using the mass of the electrons for the mass with the constituents which gave a binding energy per nucleon of 7.611 which was also incorrect.
(edited 11 months ago)
Original post by OluSeye1
I had not but am still getting incorrect answers. I firstly assumed that the mass of the constituents stays the same and the mass of just the nucleus for U-235 would be 3.9021X10^-25. The mass defect would then be 3.264x10^-27 giving a binding energy of 1835.8MeV. The binding energy per nucleon is now 7.812MeV nucleon^-1 which the website says was incorrect.

I tried again without using the mass of the electrons for the mass with the constituents which gave a binding energy per nucleon of 7.611 which was also incorrect.


mass of 92 protons + 143 neutrons = 3.9339603 X 10^-25 kg
mass of U-235 atom - mass of 92 electrons = 3.902161937 X 10^-25 kg
difference = 3.1798...X10^-27 kg
so your mass difference is not correct.
(edited 11 months ago)

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