Question

I am trying to understand the nuclear disintegration model and I want to know if anyone knows where the energy comes from when an atom is split? (Sorry I don't have a textbook yet)

Answer 1

The binding energy that holds the nucleus together. Once the atom is split, some of the binding energy is released.

Answer 2

Thanks for responding---I understand that once the strong nuclear force barrier is broken (the meson exchange) then the atom disintegrates, but is it because the energy comes from the repulsion of the protons?

Answer 3

This energy is that the energy hold the protons together and cause They are not far apart that is from protons and when we do any works to Instability the atom can use that energy .

Answer 4

Reinforcing E.ali when any pair of nucleons [ I mean proton or Neutron comes in the range of \[10^{-15} m\],they start exchanging Mesons due to which a part of the mass is converted in to energy \[by E = m c ^{2}\], which we call nuclear binding energy.That is the same reason why bound protons and neutrons are comparatively lighter than their free counterpart.Does it help You?

Answer 5

The energy comes from the famous equation E=mc^2

Find mass of a proton. Find the mass of a neutron. Take the sum of the mass of 2 neutrons and 2 protons. Then find the mass of helium. You will find that helium has less mass.

This is called mass defect or binding energy. I find it apt because it tells me that the protons and neutrons in helium owe energy; in this case in terms of mass, to break them to free neutrons and protons. It's like a energy debt they have to pay to be free.

The mass energy equivalence is where the energy comes from. For disintegration we can say that the helium tunnels through the potential barrier of the strong force, but that's only a mathematical model.

The liquid drop model tries to explain this by having the atom (droplet) oscillating until it breaks into 2, but the liquid drop model comes with other implications which don't quite agree.

Answer 6

Thanks for the responses, but I still don't understand. Help! I would like to know if the energy released comes from the repulsion or attraction of the fragmented pieces. I am trying to reason this out by using Coulombs law to figure out where the energy released when an atom splits comes from.

Answer 7

Partially, yes, but that law is part of classical electromagnetism so it certainly won't tell you the whole story once you get into quantum electrodynamics territory, which is the question you're asking. You could imagine a quasi-classical approximation to this situation by imagining the following potential energy diagram: