1 / 6

Stability of the proton

Stability of the proton. AS Level Notes. Stability of the proton and neutron. Decay of the Proton

alice-goff
Download Presentation

Stability of the proton

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Stability of the proton AS Level Notes

  2. Stability of the proton and neutron • Decay of the Proton • A free proton (one outside a nucleus) has long been considered to be a stable particle, but recent developments of grand unification models have suggested that it might decay with a half-life of about 1031 years. • WOW! 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years! • Particle Physicists are trying to prove that this is indeed the case. • The decay of the proton is associated with a quark transformation in which an "up" quark is converted to a "down" quark by the weak interaction .

  3. Proton Decay • The decay of the proton is associated with a quark transformation in which an "up" quark is converted to a "down" quark by the weak interaction .

  4. Decay of the Neutron • A free proton is virtually stable but a free neutron is comparitively very UNstable. • It will decay with a half-life of about 10.3 minutes but it is considerably more stable if combined into a nucleus.

  5. Neutron Decay • The decay of the neutron involves the weak interaction as indicated in the Feynman diagrams you know.

  6. Neutron Decay • The decay of the neutron is associated with a quark transformation in which a "down" quark is converted to an "up" quark by the weak interaction.

More Related