Science Thoughts: Assuming You Have Time To Waste

Why Isn’t an Atom’s Nucleus Round?

LiveScience.com | 5/31/25 | Victoria Atkinson

… About 90% of nuclei are shaped like an American football — technically termed “prolate deformed” — in their lowest energy state, with surprisingly few taking the opposite squashed-sphere, M&M-like shape, called oblate deformed.

OK.

The more exotic pear-shaped nucleus is restricted to certain areas of the nuclear chart, particularly around radium, while spherical nuclei are generally confined to atoms with “magic” numbers (or full shells) of nuclear particles. 

Mm-hmm. I thought so.

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