Equation 5 · Part 3 · The Valley of Stability Is a Fitness Landscape
Symbol Z
What this part means
the mass number.
Its job in the formula
Z is one of the signed contributions combined to compute the quantity on the left.
Full expression→Symbol Z→Article meaning
Where the article explains it
The quantity that plays fitness’s role has a name in nuclear physics already: binding energy per nucleon, B(A,Z)/A , where A = N + Z is the mass number.
The passage around this formula
The quantity that plays fitness’s role has a name in nuclear physics already: binding energy per nucleon, B(A,Z)/A , where A = N + Z is the mass number. It is the energy that would have to be supplied to disassemble a nucleus into Z free protons and N free neutrons, divided by the number of nucleons, and a higher value means a more tightly bound, lower-energy configuration — precisely the sense in which a fitness function…
Learn the underlying idea
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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