Rodney A. Brooks Quote
A delicate balance. In summary, nuclei are held together by a delicate balance among (a) the attractive strong force between nucleons, (b) the electrical repulsion between protons, (c) the dilution of this repulsive force by neutrons, and (d) the instability created by the Exclusion Principle if there are too many neutrons. Thus, for a given number of protons there is a narrow range of allowable neutron numbers: not enough and the protons will fly apart because of electrical repulsion: too many and the nucleus will be unstable because of the Exclusion Principle.
Rodney A. Brooks
A delicate balance. In summary, nuclei are held together by a delicate balance among (a) the attractive strong force between nucleons, (b) the electrical repulsion between protons, (c) the dilution of this repulsive force by neutrons, and (d) the instability created by the Exclusion Principle if there are too many neutrons. Thus, for a given number of protons there is a narrow range of allowable neutron numbers: not enough and the protons will fly apart because of electrical repulsion: too many and the nucleus will be unstable because of the Exclusion Principle.