It is known that a proton is of greater mass than an electron and that a neutron is far heavier than both. It is also known that protons and electrons orbit the nucleus of an atom. Can we then deduce that a neutron is a sphere?
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At low energies, the neutron has been determined to be a sphere via scattering experiments performed in the 1950s and 60s. As you raise the energy of the probe particle, the neutron and proton both stop behaving like they were little ping pong balls and start behaving as if there were three hard little point particles residing within that spherical volume. These guys were determined to be the quarks which earlier had been predicted on theoretical grounds but never detected before.
niels nielsen
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No, that would be an inaccurate conclusion. The problem with that theory is that you are assuming because it isn't known how the neutron moves that it must be the sphere. In truth, scientists don't know exactly how the three quarks move.
Neutrons and protons move similarly inside the atom's center while electrons move outside the center. However, that doesn't make either protons or neutrons the sphere. We know more about how they relate to electrons rather than how they move inside the nucleus.
