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Equation 46 · Part 1 · The Valley of Stability Is a Fitness Landscape

Symbol Z

ZZ
ZZ

What this part means

Z is a part of this expression. Its role is fixed by the surrounding article and by the operations shown in the formula.

Its job in the formula

Z is a part of this expression. Its role is fixed by the surrounding article and by the operations shown in the formula.

The passage around this formula

…from an otherwise identical isotope — which drops abruptly immediately after a magic number is crossed, the nuclear analogue of a fitness cliff rather than a gentle slope; a doubly magic nucleus, closed in both N and Z simultaneously, sits at the intersection of two such cliffs and is correspondingly the most sharply peaked point in its neighborhood on the whole chart.

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A variable is a named place for a value. Its letter is a local label: x can mean position in one formula and a data point in another.

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Sources cited in the surrounding passage

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