the.com/nucleus
holds 99.9% of an atom's mass in 0.0001% of its space, dictating everything
means The dense central core of something — the protons-and-neutrons heart of an atom, the DNA-keeping center of a cell, or the small foundational group around which a larger thing organizes.
from From Latin nucleus, meaning 'kernel' or 'little nut' — a diminutive of nux, 'nut.' So the word's deep image is a tiny seed at the center of a shell, the hard pip you bite down on. Science borrowed it in the 17th century for cell cores and later for the atom's core, keeping that same picture: the small hard center everything else wraps around. The Latin nux is also a distant cousin of English 'nut' itself.
- density
- a teaspoon would weigh billions of tons
- discovery
- Rutherford found it by firing particles at gold
- size
- like a marble inside a sports stadium
- naming
- means 'little nut' in Latin
- power
- splitting it powers cities and ends wars
nucleus of the atom — discovered by rutherford in 1911, composed of protons and neutrons making up 99.9% of an atom's mass
nucleus of a comet — nucleus of halley's comet, a few kilometers wide dirty snowball orbiting every 75-76 years
nucleus accumbens — brain region located in the striatum that processes reward, motivation, and pleasure in mammals