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proton: Quick Facts

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Simple diagrams of protons, neutrons, and pions display yellow quark and green antiquark spheres connected by purple ribbon-like gluons, illustrating the internal structure of these atomic particles.
Figure 9: Proton force. The interaction energy of two protons is shown as a function of the distance between them. At small separations, the energy is positive and the force is repulsive. At intermediate distances, the nuclear interaction is negative and the force is attractive. At distances larger than shown on the graph, the nuclear force becomes negligible and the repulsive electric force between the two charges is all that is left. The interaction depicted is for protons with antiparallel spins.
measuring correlation between photons
A Feynman diagram showing two protons colliding, with their quarks interacting to produce W bosons that combine into a Higgs boson, which then decays into two Z bosons and further into electron and muon pairs.
Computer-generated diagram showing particle tracks from a proton-antiproton collision at the center of the UA1 detector at CERN, with labeled paths for electron and positron.
Figure 13: Nuclear vibratory motion in the giant dipole resonance. Protons and neutrons move in opposite directions.
The Structure of an Atom Explained
atoms
Why is carbon called the element of life?
View an animation explaining how small things like electrons and protons can behave like particles and sometimes like waves
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Key People

Stern, Otto
Otto Stern
American physicist
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Robert Hofstadter
American physicist
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Otto Robert Frisch
Austrian physicist

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