Why are alpha particles positive?

1 Answer
Stefan V.
Dec 29, 2014

An alpha particles is positively charged because it is essentially the nucleus of a Helium-4 atom.

http://education.jlab.org/glossary/alphaparticle.html

A Helium-4 nucleus is composed of two protons, which are positively charged particles, and two neutrons, which have no electric charge.

A neutral He atom has a mass of four units (2 protons + 2 neutrons) and a net charge of zero because it has two electrons that balance the protons' positive charge; since an #alpha"-particle"# only has the protons and the neutrons, its charge will be +2#->#+1 from each proton.

Related questions
See all questions in Alpha Decay
Impact of this question
14608 views around the world
You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License