The charge of the neutron is equal to zero (0), which means that they have no charge. Neutrons are neither positive nor negative. Neutrons are neutral, and that's also the basis for their name.
As neutral particles, neutrons do not contribute any charge to the atom. Neutrons are, however, quite massive. The mass of a neutron is about the same as the mass of a proton. So atoms with many neutrons are heavier. However, no matter how many neutrons you add or take away from an atom, the atom's charge is not affected.
Atoms have other charged particles, namely electrons and protons. Electrons carry negative charge and protons carry positive charge.
Neutrons help scientists identify between different isotopes of elements. For example, usually the Hydrogen atom has one electron and one proton. However, some hydrogen atoms also have one or more neutrons and are thus heavier. If a hydrogen atom has one neutron, it is called a deuterium, which is a very interesting as it can be used in the design of the powerful hydrogen bombs.
Finally, while neutrons do not attract or repel other particles through electric charge, they can exhibit other strong attraction forces at very close distances, called nuclear forces. These are the forces that keep the protons and neutrons bound tightly in the nucleus of the atom.
Neutrons do not have any charge on them and hence are neutrally charged. In comparison, protons are positively charged and electrons are negatively charged.
Neutrons are present in the nucleus of an atom along with the protons. For this very reason, protons and neutrons are known as nucleons. The mass number of an atom is defined as the total number of protons and neutrons that it has. For example, sodium has a mass number of 23 and an atomic number (= number of protons) of 11. In other words, it contains 11 protons and 23 nucleons (protons and neutrons). Thus, we can say that a sodium atom has 23-11 = 12 neutrons.
All the known elements have neutrons, except for a normal hydrogen atom, which only contains a proton in its nucleus, but no neutrons.
Note that while neutrons do not have a charge, they have mass and, thus, affect the total mass of an atom.
No comments:
Post a Comment