Concepts In Nuclear Physics

The history of nuclear physics as a discipline distinct from atomic physics starts with the discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896, while investigating phosphorescence in uraniumsalts. The discovery of the electron by J. J. Thomson a year later was an indication that the atom had internal structure. At the turn of the 20th century the accepted model of the atom was J. J. Thomson’s plum pudding model in which the atom was a large positively charged ball with small negatively charged electrons embedded inside of it. By the turn of the century physicists had also discovered three types of radiation emanating from atoms, which they named alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. Experiments in 1911 by Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn, and by James Chadwick in 1914 discovered that the beta decay spectrum was continuous rather than discrete. It is found extremely necessary to bring out the present book in a more useful and enlarged form to serve the basic purpose of the students.