The atom is considered to be the basic building block of all matter. A simple theory of the atom tells us that it consists of two components: a nucleus surrounded by an electron cloud. From an electrical point of view, the nucleus is said to be positively charged and the electrons negatively charged. Whereas from a size point of view, the radius of an atom is 10-10. A simple description of the nucleus tells us that is is composed of protons and neutrons. These two particle types are collectively called nucleons (particles which inhabit the nucleus. In a nucleus, there is two classification, those are the Atomic number which define the number of protons in a nucleus, and the other is the Mass number which is defined as the number of nucleons in a nucleus (number of protons plus the number of neutrons). …show more content…
Since this binding energy is dependent on the number of nucleons in a nucleus, that is the Mass Number and since the electrostatic repulsion between the protons is dependent on the square of the charges. In other words to battle the effect of the increase in electrostatic repulsion when the number of protons increases the number of neutrons must increase more rapidly to contribute sufficient energy to bind the nucleus together. It has being found that the most stable isotopes for each element has a specific number of neutrons in its nucleus. The Nuclear stability Curve is a graph of the number of protons against the number of neutrons for these stable isotopes