Proton

“ A proton, and perhaps an electron, would be an association of such primates, superposed on each other, with their frequencies and spatial dimensions so arranged as to promote the stability of the complex organism, when jolted into accelerations of locomotion. 188The conditions for stability would give the associations of periods possible for protons. The expulsion of a primate would come from a jolt which leads the proton either to settle down into an alternative association, or to generate a new primate by the aid of the energy received. ”

“ Our wall of protonic material won't be affected by it in the least, because it has no tendency to collapse, as has normal matter, but Thett, beyond the wall, has that tendency, and the ray will release the energy of every planetary electron on Thett, and every planetary electron will take with it the energy of one proton. ”

“ The proton is transformed likewise into a neutron plus something else. This something else is called a positron and is identical with the electron in every respect except in having a positive instead of a negative charge. ”

“ The neutron carries one baryonic charge unit, or represents one baryon, a proton represents one baryon – all we are doing is counting and making big words! – so if the reaction I am speaking of occurs, in which a neutron decays into a proton, an electron and an anti-neutrino, the total number of baryons does not change. However there are other reactions in nature. A proton plus a proton can produce a great variety of strange objects, for example a lambda, a proton and a K plus. Lambda and K plus are names for peculiar particles. ”

“ Her smile was encouraging.
“He said—and I quote”—Mike’s voice assumed a gloomy, but stilted tone—“normal hydrogen gas consists of diatomic [188] molecules. The nuclear, or proton, spin of these atoms—ah—that is, of the two atoms that compose the molecule—may be oriented in the same direction or in opposite directions.”
He held a finger in the air as if to make a deep philosophical point. “If,” he said pontifically, “they are oriented in the same direction, we refer to the substance as orthohydrogen. If they are oriented in opposite directions, it is parahydrogen. ”

“ All electrons are exactly alike, and all protons are exactly alike. All protons carry a certain amount of positive electricity, and all electrons carry an equal100 amount of negative electricity. But the mass of a proton is about 1835 times that of an electron: it takes 1835 electrons to weigh as much as one proton. ”

“ The purpose of this experiment was to detect the spin directions of protons as they are knocked out of a liquid hydrogen target by a π-meson beam. (Like the earth, a proton spins on its axis.) An extracted proton beam from the cyclotron enters the physics cave from the left, striking a polyethylene target and producing π mesons. A beam of these mesons is formed by a series of two bending magnets and three focusing magnets. This beam passes through a carbon absorber to remove unwanted particles. The meson beam then strikes the liquid hydrogen target. ”

“ They differ in their actions. Protons don’t like to associate with other protons but take quite keenly to electrons. And electrons–they go with protons but they won’t associate 5with each other. An electron always likes to be close to a proton. Two is company when one is an electron and the other a proton but three is a crowd always.
It doesn’t make any difference to a proton what electron it is keeping company with provided only it is an electron and not another proton. All electrons are alike as far as we can tell and so are all protons. ”

“ The simplest isotopes are the isotopes of hydrogen. Most of the hydrogen atoms we find in nature have a nucleus which is a single proton. This is the common hydrogen or light hydrogen. A few hydrogen atoms, however, have nuclei which consist of a proton and a neutron. This is the heavy hydrogen, found in heavy water. In all natural sources of water these 28 two kinds of hydrogen are mixed in a ratio which is practically the same for every sample. The electron circulating around the nucleus behaves almost exactly the same way whether the extra neutron is present or not. ”

“ A hydrogen atom—its electron far from the proton falls in, and from it there goes a flash of radiation, and the electron is nearer to the proton, in a new orbit. Another flash—it is nearer. Always falling nearer, and only constant force will keep it from falling to that one state—then, for some reason no more does it drop. ”

“ And yet, by the proton-electron theory of nuclear structure, the nitrogen-14 nucleus, with a mass number of 14 and an atomic number of 7, had to be made up of 14 protons and 7 electrons for a total of 21 particles altogether—an odd number.
The nuclear spin of nitrogen-14 indicated “even number” and the proton-electron theory indicated “odd number”. One or the other had to be wrong, but which? The nuclear spin was a matter of actual measurement, which could be repeated over and over and on which all agreed. The proton-electron theory was only a theory. ”

“ An antiproton, however, is 1836 times as massive as a positron. It would take gamma rays or cosmic particles with 1836 times as much energy to form the proton-antiproton pair as would suffice for the electron-positron pair. Cosmic particles of the necessary energies existed but they were rare and the chance of someone being present with a particle detector just as a rare super-energetic cosmic particle happened to form a proton-antiproton pair was very small. ”

“ Much evidence now exists that the neutron is a fundamental particle in its own right and that it should not be thought of merely as a particle formed by a very close association between a proton and an electron. ”

“ It is harder to get it started but it is just as much harder to get it to stop after it is once started or to change its direction and go a different direction. The proton has the larger inertia. It is the electron which is the easier to start or stop. ”

“ That matter is nothing but protons; there are no electrons there, and the positive electrical field is inconceivably great, but it is artificial matter, and that electrical field exerts its strain not in pulling and electrifying other bodies, but in holding space open, in keeping it from closing in about that concentrated matter, just as it does about a single proton, except that here the entire field energy is so absorbed. ”

“ By bombarding nitrogen nuclei with alpha particles from radium, he found that nitrogen was changed into oxygen.
The process for radioactive transmutation is somewhat like a common chemical reaction. An alpha particle, which has the same charge (+2) and atomic mass (4) as a helium nucleus, penetrates the repulsive forces of the nitrogen nucleus and deposits one proton and one neutron; this changes the nitrogen atom into an oxygen atom. The reaction is written
The number at the lower left of each element symbol in the above reaction is the proton number. ”

“ If the volume of a proton—eighteen hundred times as heavy as an electron—should be magnified to the size of the head of a pin, then, in comparison, a pin's head would attain a diameter equal to that of the earth's orbit around the sun. ”

“ It must be confessed that there is little information to guide us with the exception of our knowledge of the nuclear charges and masses of the various species of elements which survive to-day. It has always been a matter of great difficulty to imagine how the more complex nuclei can be built up by the successive additions of protons and electrons, since the proton must be endowed with a very high speed to approach closely to the charged nucleus. ”

“ Of course, protons obtained by the ionization of hydrogen atoms have very little energy, but could energy be imparted to them? Protons carry a positive charge and a force can therefore be exerted upon them by an electric or magnetic field. In a device that makes use of such fields, protons can be accelerated (made to go faster and faster) , and thus gain more and more energy. In the end, if enough energy is gained, the proton could do more damage than the alpha particle, despite the former’s smaller mass. ”

“ Any charged particle, irrespective of its energy, moving in any medium—air, water, soil, or living tissue—creates ion pairs at the rate of about one per 32 electron-volts. A one-million-electron-volt particle produces about 30,000 ion pairs before losing all of its energy. (When it does lose its energy, if it is a positively charged particle, it will pick up enough electrons to become neutral. An alpha particle, for example, will become an ordinary helium atom; a proton will become an atom of hydrogen.) ”

“ Then there is another reason why you must not think of them as bricks and that is because when you build a house out of bricks each brick must rest on another. Between an electron and any other electron or between two protons or between an electron and a proton there is usually a relatively enormous distance. There is enough space so that lots of other electrons or protons could be fitted in between if only they were willing to get that close together. ”

“ In Orvonton it has never been possible naturally to assemble over one hundred orbital electrons in one atomic system. When one hundred and one have been artificially introduced into the orbital field, the result has always been the instantaneous disruption of the central proton with the wild dispersion of the electrons and other liberated energies. ”

“ What gets away isn’t a sodium atom for it has one too few electrons; and what remains behind isn’t a chlorine atom for it has one too many electrons. We call these new groups “ions” from a Greek word which means “to go” for they do go, wandering off into the spaces between the water 20molecules. Fig. 3 gives you an idea of what happens.
You remember that in an atom there are always just as many protons as electrons. In this sodium ion which is formed when the nucleus of the sodium atom breaks away but leaves behind one planetary electron, there is then one more proton than there are electrons. ”

“ What one usually knows instead, is the roentgen dosage to a piece of tissue, which consists of many cells. If the charged particles inducing the ionization are electrons (as they are when the primary radiation is a beta ray or a gamma ray) , the ionization will be distributed more or less uniformly among the cells in the affected neighborhood. If the charged particle is heavy—a proton or an alpha ray—the density of ionization which it produces is much greater, so that some cells receive a good many more ion pairs, while others nearby may receive none. ”

“ I have already discussed in this paper the evidence that powerful attractive forces varying very rapidly with the distance are present close to the nuclear structure and it seems probable that these forces must ultimately be ascribed to the constituent proton. ”

“ Since the carbon cannot hold more than four such protons, when this saturation state is attained, it begins to emit protons as fast as new ones arrive. In this reaction the ingoing hydrogen particles come forth as a helium atom. ”

“ By proper number of electrons I mean proper for the number of protons which it has. If an ion has more electrons than protons it is negative; if the inequality is the other way around it is positive. An atom or molecule has neither more nor less protons than electrons. ”

“ Two protons and two neutrons are distinctly heavier than a helium nucleus, which also consists of two protons and two neutrons. Energy makes up the difference.
HELIUM NUCLEUS TWO PROTONS AND TWO NEUTRONS
What happens to the missing atomic weight of 0.0302? Physicists now realize that, as postulated in Einstein’s formula, it must be converted into energy! The conversion occurs when the protons and neutrons are drawn together into a helium nucleus by the powerful nuclear forces between them. ”

“ First we found that energy of contraction was hopelessly inadequate; then we found that the energy must be released in the interior of the star, so that it comes from an internal, not an external, source; now we take stock of the whole internal store of energy. No supply of any importance is found until we come to consider the electrons and atomic nuclei; here a reasonable amount can be released by regrouping the protons and electrons in the atomic nuclei (transmutation of [Pg 99] elements) , and a much greater amount by annihilating them. ”

“ The parts of the nucleus are called protons and neutrons.
The simple statements of the previous chapter apply to these smaller particles also. All electrons are equal—precisely equal. All protons are equal and all neutrons are equal. There are methods which would have shown up exceedingly small differences between these particles. No such differences have been discovered. As far as we know these particles are always the same. We cannot pour energy into them and excite them as was the case with the atoms. ”

“ The atoms are so violently colliding with each other at that temperature, that the atoms themselves are knocked to pieces by the violence of their collision. If the molecules of a substance collide sufficiently violently, they are broken up. Thus, at 5000 degrees, the molecules of water collide so violently that they cannot maintain themselves, and the shocks break them down into hydrogen and oxygen atoms. But at 40,000,000 degrees the atoms collide so violently they are decomposed into protons and electrons. ”