Frank Sanns wrote:Preston,
Thanks for the link. I have used this in the past but am at a total loss on how to get all the data possible from the site.
Can you give me some idea how to input the data. I looked at all of the examples but I cannot even get H-2 as the projectile and H-2 the target to yield me a result.
Also, I do not know for sure what the product will be for some of the reactions that I am searching. I have a good guess but it would be nice to see what all products might be and the branching.
Thanks.
Under "Parameters:" you can choose filters such as the target nucleus, reaction, product and so on. The little arrows on the right side will pop up a window with all the possible choices. For example, the arrow next to target opens a periodic table where you can select hydrogen then get a list of all available isotopes of hydrogen. You want H-2 for deuterium.
It is best to start as generic as possible so you don't prematurely exclude any results.
Click submit and you will be shown a big confusing page of results. By default, the results are grouped by reaction. A nuclear reaction is denoted A(a, bcd)B, where A is the target nucleus,a is the bombarding particle, b, c, and d are the emitted particles, and B is the residual nucleus (the lighter reaction products are recorded within parentheses, and the heavier ones outside)
For example, "H-2(D,N'),SIG" means H-2 incident on a deuterium nucleus and ejecting a neutron. The residual nucleus is commonly omitted because it is implied by the target and bombarding particle. The "SIG" denotes sigma or cross-section; this specifies what types of data are available for each reaction. Elastic cross-sections or angular energy distributions are among some of the other possibilities. There is also some basic meta-data listed such as author, lab, date and so on.
If multiple groups have published results for the same reaction, they get lumped together. You can click the little folder icon to expand. You can then select a single result or an entire folder and either plot the data or get a text file result using the appropriate button next to the individual result or at the top of the page.
Nuclear reactions need to be balanced in a similar way to chemical reactions (this is why the residual nucleus is implied in the notation above). A good basic introduction can be found here.
http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Physical_Ch ... _Reactions
This will limit the possible products for given target and incident particle. All reactions that are balanced are possible, providing the threshold energy is satisfied. If multiple results are possible, the cross-sections will tell you the relative ratios of the different possibilities. For example, shooting a beam of deuterium into a stationary background of deuterium will result in D(D,N) and D(D,P) with about equal cross-sections.