How does neutron turn into proton

Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. In nuclear chemistry, how does a neutron split to form a proton and an electron? Ask Question. Asked 7 years, 11 months ago. Active 1 year, 6 months ago. Viewed 5k times. Improve this question. Maximilian Maximilian 33 1 1 silver badge 4 4 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Jay Jay 36 3 3 bronze badges.

MaxW MaxW Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown. Featured on Meta. Now live: A fully responsive profile. Does this suggest that electric charge is separate to an elementary particle?

Loosely in changing its charge the quark changes flavour; it becomes another type of quark. The weak force is responsible for allowing such changes. Each quark is still, as far as we know fundamental. One argument against a neutron composed of a proton plus an electron It happens with nuclei that have too many protons and too few neutrons. In that case, the mass difference between the older and newer nuclei favours the transformation in this direction.

Which implies that all protons and neutrons in the nuclei have an influence, it's not a matter of one neutron or one proton alone that decomposes. Well, this was already clear from the neutron's stability in many nuclei, while a lone neutron decomposes.

In the conversion process, is the W- particle a real particle? Wikipedia has the mass of the W- boson as being much greater than that of a proton or a neutron. It's a virtual particle. The W doesn't exist very long, which is why this is a short-ranged interaction, small cross-section, and doesn't happen as regularly all other things being equal. That's why it's "weak".

Even if it were permanent, a different possibility would have been the interaction energy, which lets particles weigh together less than if separated.

This tends to be more important at smaller scale. You need to be a member in order to leave a comment. Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy! Already have an account? Sign in here. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings , otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. How does the neutron turn into a proton and electron in Beta Decay?

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