Shell Nuclear Model

shell nuclear model, description of nuclei of atoms by analogy with the Bohr atomic model of electron energy levels. It was developed independently in the late 1940s by the American physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer and the German physicist J. Hans D. Jensen, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963 for their work. In the shell nuclear model, the constituent nuclear particles are paired neutron with neutron and proton with proton in nuclear-energy levels that are filled, or closed, when the number of protons or neutrons equals 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, or 126, the so-called magic numbers that indicate especially stable nuclei. The unpaired neutrons and protons account for the properties of a particular species of nucleus as valence electrons account for the chemical properties of the various elements. The shell model accurately predicts certain properties of normal nuclei, such as their angular momentum; but for nuclei in highly unstable states, the shell model is no longer adequate and must be modified or replaced by another model, such as the liquid-drop model, collective model, compound-nucleus model, or optical model.