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Chapter 11: Q9CQ (page 517)

why does fission of heavy nuclei tend to produce free neutrons?

Short Answer

Expert verified

In the heavy nuclei, the Coulomb repulsion of the protons become important and thus the heavy nuclei tend to have more neutrons than protons

Step by step solution

01

Given data

Heavy nuclei fission is producing free neutrons

02

Concept of Nuclear fission

Nuclear fission, subdivision of a heavy atomic nucleus, such as that of uranium or plutonium, is into two fragments of roughly equal mass.

03

Explanation of nuclei fission producing free neutrons

In the heavy nuclei, the Coulomb repulsion of the protons become important and thus the heavy nuclei tend to have more neutrons than protons.

The fission products of the heavy nuclei are the intermediate-mass nuclei, which are much lighter and tend to have equal number of neutrons and protons.

The energy is lowered if the extra neutrons are simply freed.

Thus, the fission of the heavy nuclei will produce free neutrons

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Most popular questions from this chapter

Exercise 19 notes that the energy needed to remove a neutron fron helium-4 is 20.6 MeV

(a) Show that the energy required to remove a proton is 19.8 MeV.

(b) Why do these values disagree with the BE/nucleon value shown for helium-4 in Figure 11.14?

What is the recoil speed of the daughter nucleus when 67152Hoα decays.

Given initially 40mg of radium-226 (one of the decay products of uranium-238), determine,

(a) The amount that will be left after 500years.

(b) The number of α particles the radium will have emitted during this time, and

(c) The amount of kinetic energy that will have been released.

(d) Find the decay rate of the radium at the end of the 500 year.

Ten milligrams of pure polonium-210 is placed in 500 g of water.If no heat is allowed to escape to the surroundings, how much will the temperature rise in 1 hour?

According to the semiempirical binding energy formula, what should be binding energy per nucleon of technetium -98 .
See all solutions

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