1 - Introduction

Summary

Nuclear physics is an intriguing subject because of the great variety of phenomena that occur. Nuclei exhibit many different types of behaviour, from the classical, where the nucleus behaves like a liquid drop, to the quantum-mechanical, where nuclei show a shell structure similar to that found in atoms. It is a considerable intellectual challenge to try and understand this behaviour and many models have been devised. These models are described in chapter 2 and used to understand the principal properties of nuclei and their excited states.

The study of beta and gamma decay in nuclei has given considerable information on the structure of nuclei; and from experiments on beta decay on the nature of the weak interaction, for example parity violation and the helicity of the neutrino. These topics are discussed in chapters 3 and 4.

The importance of quantum-mechanical tunnelling in nuclear physics is illustrated by a discussion in chaper 5 of α-decay, fission and thermonuclear fusion. The last two have considerable significance in other fields, for example nuclear power and nuclear astrophysics.

The interactions between nuclei offer a rich variety of phenomena and these are described in chapter 6. The basic types of nuclear reactions: compound nucleus, direct and deep-inelastic, and typical features such as the occurrence of resonances and characteristic angular distributions, are first described before reaction theories are developed.

The forces between nucleons are discussed in chapter 7. The information from neutron-proton and proton-proton scattering is analysed and the characteristics of the nuclear force explained.