particle accelerators/nucleus (1 Viewer)

[stangburger]

Soooo... does anyone know how particle accelerators help us to probe the nucleus?

 

[Aerath]

Using alternating positive and negative electric fields to create a repulsive force behind the particle, and an attractive force in front of the particle to accelerate it to speeds high enough to overcome the repulsive electrostatic force of the nucleus (assuming you're bombarding it with something positive, ie, charged ions etc). You wouldn't really use an accelerator to bombard a nucelus with neutrons - a nuclear reactor will do.

 

[ajay098]

Particle accelerators are used to accelerate sub-atomic particles to cery high energies. The two main uses of particles accelerators are
(a) to produce radioisotopes by bombarding elements with various sub-atomic particles
b) to produce beams of very high energy particles that can be used to probe the structure of matter - the higher the energy ( and therefore the velocity)of a particle, the smaller the De Broglie Wavelength. The smaller the De Broglie wavelength, the smaller the detail the particle can 'see' - ie the better the resolving power of a beam of such paticles.

 

[pman]

Very high energy beams also allow as to creat particles with insanely short half lives, this means we can see big bang offshoot particles (e.g. top quark)

 

[gabgab]

like throwing a car at a wall and smashing it to pieces.

that way you can find the components of the nucleus etc.