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Asked in GSEB Board March 2020 · Binding energy curve and nuclear force
Idea: read the shape of the binding-energy-per-nucleon curve. It climbs steeply for the lightest nuclei, levels off near 8.5 MeV per nucleon, and then falls slowly.
The level stretch runs from about A=30 to about A=170; across it E_bn stays within a few per cent of 8 MeV, because the short-range nuclear force lets each nucleon feel only its neighbours however big the nucleus gets.
Beyond A=170 the long-range Coulomb repulsion between the many protons pulls the curve down.
So the binding energy per nucleon is almost constant for 30<A<170.
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