Atomic and Nuclear Structures
In a paper on atomic and nuclear structures, give shore description of the following terms.
Describe the structure and composition of an atom in terms of electro, proton and neutron
How the atoms participate in a chemical reaction through atomic bonding
Define, element, Atomic number, atomic weight, isotopes, isobars and isotones
Nuclear structure, nuclear reactions and radioactive decay
Read the packet on Testbank-sun. It will be included in the exam
Give a complete description of HR-diagram
Atomic and Nuclear structures
An atom is the smallest unit of matter that contains all chemical properties of an element. In terms of particles, atoms contain protons, electrons and neutrons in its composition. The center of the atom is the nucleus which accommodates the protons and neutrons. The outermost regions of the atom have electrons shells that contains the electrons. Different atoms have different properties in terms of arrangements and number of basic particles.
Chemical reaction in the atomic bonding is occur in atoms through forming of chemical bonds that gain stability of the outer electron shells. Chemical reactions that form chemical bonds are fueled in maximizing stability of the atoms that form it. In an ionic bond, chemical reactions involve the donation of one electron from an atom to another atom which forms when one atom loses outer electrons to become stable while the other atoms becomes stable through filling the valence shell in gaining electrons. Chemical reactions in covalent bonds involves the sharing of atoms to result to higher stability than before the reaction.
It is important to understand the logic of electronegativity which is the measure of the attraction an atom has to electrons in a chemical bond. According to electronegativity, the chemical reactions and atomic bonding depends on the attraction the atoms possess in their structures. The Nobles gases are considered to be the most stable atoms and rarely bonds due to the fact that they outer electron shells are full. Therefore, reaction in the atomic level will be attributed to the attraction of an atom to gain electrons and the other atom to accept electrons. As a result, an ionic bond will be formed. When electronegativity attraction of two atoms are more or less equal the chemical bond and reaction involves sharing of electrons in a covalent bond to increase the stability of their valence electron shell.
An element is identified as a substance that cannot be subdivided and broken down into simpler components by means of non-nuclear chemical reactions. Atomic number of an atom described as the number of all protons that are accommodated in atom. Atoms of an element can have same number of protons in their structure. Different from atomic number, atomic weight is the average mass obtained from atoms of an element which are computed through factoring the relative abundance of isotopes for a naturally occurring element.
Isotopes are the different variations of a specific element that contain different numbers of neutrons whereby the number of the protons are the same. Isobars, are different from isotopes in that the elements have the same number of nucleons that gives the sum of protons and neutrons and varying numbers of protons and neutrons. Isotones involves the atoms that have the same neutron composition with different number of protons. Isotones of a number have the atoms with different atomic numbers and mass numbers but the same number of neutrons.
Nuclear structure involves the nucleus of an atom that is composed of protons and neutrons. The nucleus is positively charged and is surrounded by negatively charged electrons and makes up 99.9 percent of the total mass of the atom. Nuclear reactions involve the process through which two nuclear particles collided to cause rearrangement in the nucleus to produce different products from the initial particles. Radioactive decay is the spontaneous event which involves the discharge of a particle from the nucleus of an atom to changes its nuclear state.
HR, Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram is astronomers’ graphical tool that classifies stars in terms of the spectral type, temperature, luminosity, color and evolutionary stage by plotting them against the absolute magnitude.
References
Hoelz, A., Glavy, J. S., & Beck, M. (2016). Toward the atomic structure of the nuclear pore complex: when top down meets bottom up. Nature structural & molecular biology, 23(7), 624.
Yasui, S. (2018). Heavy hadrons in atomic nuclei and nuclear matter. Bulletin of the American Physical Society, 63.
Jedele, A., McIntosh, A. B., Hagel, K., Huang, M., Heilborn, L., Kohley, Z., … & Yennello, S. J. (2017). Characterizing neutron-proton equilibration in nuclear reactions with subzeptosecond resolution. Physical Review Letters, 118(6), 062501.
Davoudi, Z. (2018). Lattice QCD input for nuclear structure and reactions. In EPJ Web of Conferences (Vol. 175, p. 01022). EDP Sciences.
