ABSTRACT
Collective properties of nuclei are conveniently studied in terms of the nuclear surface. Experimental information about the charge and matter distributions, the size, and the deformations of nuclei are obtained by very different physical methods. Some of these methods, like electron scattering, X-ray radiation of muonic atoms, proton, pion, a-particle and heavyion scattering, Coulomb displacement energies, Coulomb excitations, hyperfine splitting, isotope shift, muonic isomer shift, nuclear spectroscopy, and others, are briefly presented in the second and third sections of this chapter dealing with the density distribution for shapes with spherical symmetry and with deformations. Very often the results of the measurements are presented in terms of nuclear radii and electric multi pole moments.
