The nucleus of an atom contains _________. a.

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. Atoms are the basic units of matter and the defining structure of elements. ... We now know that atoms are made up of three particles: protons, neutrons and electrons - which are composed of even smaller particles such as quarks.

depends on which element.

Iodine has an atomic weight of 126.9, comprised of 53 protons and 74 neutrons. It also has 53 electrons, because the number of electrons will always match the number of protons. The electrons are arranged in shells containing 2, 8, 18, 18, 7 electrons, totaling 53.

Atomic protons? The nucleus of the atom of each stable element has a certain number of protons, and except for hydrogen, also neutrons. These numbers are what differentiate the elements and give them properties, whether gaseous, metallic, alkaline, reactive or inert. Protons have a positive electrical charge.

The number of electrons will match the number of protons to give a stable atom a neutral net charge. An atom which loses or gains an electron or 2 is known as an ion. An atom which gains one or more neutrons is known as an isotope. However ions and isotopes still have their proper numbers of protons.

Ions will seek to attach to another particle so as to gain stability. Isotopes will decay over time, sometimes thousands of years.

All the elements are arranged in families or groups where chemical properties are comparable, in the Periodic Table of the Elements

https://theapevine.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/periodic-table.png

Atoms are the basic building blocks of everything around us. They come in different kinds, called elements, but each atom shares certain characteristics in common. All atoms have a dense central core called the atomic nucleus. Forming the nucleus are two kinds of particles: protons, which have a positive electrical charge, and neutrons, which have no charge. All atoms have at least one proton in their core, and the number of protons determines which kind of element an atom is. For example, an oxygen atom has 8 protons. If you were somehow able to change the proton number of this atom to 7, even if everything else remained the same, it would no longer be an oxygen atom, it would be nitrogen. For this reason, we list the different elements by their proton, or atomic, number. The periodic table of elements is a chart of all of the elements that have been discovered so far, in order by their atomic number.

What is the atomic-weight for N (Nitrogen)? For oxygen?
The atomic-weight determines the number of protons in the nucleus of the atom, and the number of electrons at each level.

Protons have a +1 charge. This is the same magnitude of an electron but an electron has a −1 charge. Neutrons have a 0 or no charge.

The following Wiki Article explains the process of Proton decay

Main article: Proton decay Protons are observed to be stable and their theoretical minimum half-life is 1036 years. Grand unified theories generally predict that proton decay should take place, although experiments so far have only resulted in a lower limit of 1035 years for the proton's lifetime. In other words, proton decay has never been witnessed and the experimental lower bound on the mean proton lifetime (2.1×1029 years) is put by the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.[5]

However, protons are known to transform into neutrons through the process of electron capture. "When a high energy-proton collides with an atom, it causes the ejection of an electron from the outer layer of the atom."[6]:125 This process does not occur spontaneously but only when energy is supplied. The equation is:
where
p is a proton, e is an electron, n is a neutron, and νe is an electron neutrino The process is reversible: neutrons can convert back to protons through beta decay, a common form of radioactive decay. In fact, a free neutron decays this way with a mean lifetime of about 15 minutes.

Hi,

The current view is that atoms are made up of protons and neutrons (which in turn are made up of quarks and gluons) and electrons. The protons and neutrons are at the central core called the nucleus, and the electrons revolve around it, being held in orbit by the electromagnetic force between the negatively charged electrons and the positively charged protons in the central nucleus. It is very much like the solar system with the sun at the center and the planets revolving around it. They were formed right after the "Big Bang" when our known universe originated from pure energy some billions of years ago. The energy was converted to the elementary particles (quarks, gluons, leptons etc...) from which protons and neutrons were formed. From these, atoms of different elements were produced.

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