
You may have heard about nickel and electron, or “neutron” and “electron”, in the same sentence, but that’s not the whole story.
Both metals are useful in a variety of applications, but are often overlooked because they’re relatively small and have only one useful electron, the one in the nucleus of a proton.
The difference between the two is that neutrons don’t leave a trail as electrons, and the electron they leave is very unstable.
For this reason, it’s a bit of a challenge to understand how electrons and neutrons interact in an atom.
As we’ll see, it turns out that it’s much more complex than we’ve previously thought.
Learn more about the two metals here.