Radioactive Decay
Why, as you increase the number of protons and neutrons linearly do you get an unstable nucleus? From what I have read it says that stable nuclei need to have more neutrons than protons because neutrons increase the strong nuclear force without adding more electrostatic repulsion. But what confuses me is that if you did increase the number of protons and neutrons linearly then why does the nuclear force drop off? I have read that it is to do with the fact that the nucleus is bigger and the strong force has a short range so it drops off inside the nucleus. But this implies the strong force is at the center of the nucleus. Isn't the strong force everywhere in the nucleus, such that as you add more neutrons and protons to the outer edge the strong nuclear force would act here as well and therefore no drop off?
The electrostatic repulsion has a very large range relative to the strong force, so if you had a large nucleus such as 200 nucleons, then the nucleons at the centre of the nucleus wouldn't contribute to stabilizing the nucleons at the outer most part of the nucleus, whilst they are still being repelled by the coulomb force due to those same charged nucleons at the centre hence there is an imbalance of forces for those outer nucleons relative to the forces originated by the nucleons at the centre, coulomb and strong force.
Original post by Protoxylic
The electrostatic repulsion has a very large range relative to the strong force, so if you had a large nucleus such as 200 nucleons, then the nucleons at the centre of the nucleus wouldn't contribute to stabilizing the nucleons at the outer most part of the nucleus, whilst they are still being repelled by the coulomb force due to those same charged nucleons at the centre hence there is an imbalance of forces for those outer nucleons relative to the forces originated by the nucleons at the centre, coulomb and strong force.
Thanks
Original post by Bibloski
Thanks
To elaborate, in fact, the electrostatic force, or Coulomb force, has infinite range since the photon, which mediates this force, has an infinite life time and does not "decay" as such. But the magnitude of this force varies inversely proportionately to the square of the distance between the two objects (nucleons in this case). But the strong force has a cutoff distance (of the order of 10^-15m) due to the nature of the gauge boson having a finite lifetime as it decays into it's constituent leptons since they only exist through the uncertainty principal. (I'm only talking through an A-level perspective here)
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