5.11 Atlas of Nuclear Structures by Element

Home ／ Chapter 5: Microscopic Particles

This section presents schematic nuclear structures for representative isotopes of all 118 elements. We use a unified visual key: protons appear as red rings, neutrons as black rings, and inter-nucleon interactions as translucent blue “color corridors.” Gluon-like exchange modes are shown as small yellow ovals moving within those corridors. An outer gray arrow ring depicts the nucleus’s time-averaged, nearly isotropic “shallow mass basin.”

Each schematic strictly matches the proton number Z and the selected isotope’s total nucleon number A (A = Z + N). Layers follow the accepted magic-number framework (2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, 126…). These figures are physical-intuition visualizations: they emphasize “shell closure and cross-shell linkage” rather than exact single-nucleon quantum occupations.

Therefore, their value is to provide an intuitive structural atlas that helps interpret relative stability and geometry of different nuclei under the shell model. In the tables below, diagram names follow the pattern: index–code–nucleon count.