Nuclear Chemistry is Weird

Here’s how to make sense of the strangeness of the atomic nucleus

There’s a reason I initially felt, shall we say, “uncomfortable” writing about nuclear chemistry, but it wasn’t until I talked to my friend (who has a PhD in nuclear chemistry) in preparation for writing this article that I figured out why. There’s something about nuclear chemistry and nuclear physics that just clashes with classic chemistry ways of thinking, or chemical intuition, as it’s called. It just feels off. We’ll get to what that specifically is later, but there are…