ABSTRACT
Understanding how nucleons – protons and neutrons – hold together, despite the fantastic repulsion of positively charged protons, is one of the great scientific achievements of the 20th century. Following the mass–energy equivalence of Einstein, binding energy (E b) represents the mass change associated with nuclear processes. The stability of nuclides is dependent upon the number of nuclides, whether there is an even or odd number of protons and or neutrons, the parity between protons and neutrons, and proton–proton repulsion. In this chapter, a coherent framework is presented for understanding nuclear stability. Readers are then introduced to radioactivity (α decay, β decay, and γ decay) and the behavior of unstable nuclides, with special attention given to the nuclear shell model as an explanatory model for β decay. Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion of nuclear transmutation and decay chains in the context of radiometric dating.
