Blockchain could be the key to nuclear material safeguards
Did you know that many countries still rely on paper-based systems to keep track of transactions involving nuclear material?
Oct 31, 2022
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Energy & Green Tech
Did you know that many countries still rely on paper-based systems to keep track of transactions involving nuclear material?
Oct 31, 2022
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34
Engineering
Scientists from Qingdao University of Technology for the first time summarized the development status and technical bottlenecks of electrostatic atomization minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) to further promote the green ...
Oct 18, 2022
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Energy & Green Tech
Hydrogen represents a promising option for powerful and clean energy.
Oct 6, 2022
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Business
Atom Computing, a California-based startup that builds quantum computers, opened its largest research and development facility in Boulder on Wednesday.
Sep 30, 2022
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Computer Sciences
A student in Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science (SCS) has used reinforcement learning to help control nuclear fusion reactions, a significant step toward harnessing the immense power produced in nuclear ...
Sep 9, 2022
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341
Energy & Green Tech
Many of us are all too familiar with how strain in work relationships can impact performance, but new research shows that materials in electricity-producing fuel cells may be sensitive to strain on an entirely different level.
Sep 9, 2022
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74
Energy & Green Tech
Germany said Monday it would keep two nuclear plants on standby beyond the end of the year in a policy U-turn, as the shut-off of Russian gas supplies sends Europe scrambling for energy sources.
Sep 5, 2022
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51
Engineering
What goes on inside planets like Neptune and Uranus? To find out, an international team headed by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), the University of Rostock and France's École Polytechnique conducted a novel ...
Sep 2, 2022
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Energy & Green Tech
As the costs of importing energy soars worldwide and climate crises wreak havoc, interest in nuclear power is on the rise with nations scrambling to find alternative sources.
Aug 27, 2022
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Machine learning & AI
Color coding makes aerial maps much more easily understood. Through color, we can tell at a glance where there is a road, forest, desert, city, river or lake.
Aug 16, 2022
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The atom is a basic unit of matter consisting of a dense, central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons (except in the case of hydrogen-1, which is the only stable nuclide with no neutron). The electrons of an atom are bound to the nucleus by the electromagnetic force. Likewise, a group of atoms can remain bound to each other, forming a molecule. An atom containing an equal number of protons and electrons is electrically neutral, otherwise it has a positive or negative charge and is an ion. An atom is classified according to the number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus: the number of protons determines the chemical element, and the number of neutrons determine the isotope of the element.
The name atom comes from the Greek ἄτομος/átomos, α-τεμνω, which means uncuttable, something that cannot be divided further. The concept of an atom as an indivisible component of matter was first proposed by early Indian and Greek philosophers. In the 17th and 18th centuries, chemists provided a physical basis for this idea by showing that certain substances could not be further broken down by chemical methods. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, physicists discovered subatomic components and structure inside the atom, thereby demonstrating that the 'atom' was divisible. The principles of quantum mechanics were used to successfully model the atom.
Relative to everyday experience, atoms are minuscule objects with proportionately tiny masses. Atoms can only be observed individually using special instruments such as the scanning tunneling microscope. Over 99.9% of an atom's mass is concentrated in the nucleus, with protons and neutrons having roughly equal mass. Each element has at least one isotope with unstable nuclei that can undergo radioactive decay. This can result in a transmutation that changes the number of protons or neutrons in a nucleus. Electrons that are bound to atoms possess a set of stable energy levels, or orbitals, and can undergo transitions between them by absorbing or emitting photons that match the energy differences between the levels. The electrons determine the chemical properties of an element, and strongly influence an atom's magnetic properties.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA