(ii) Ebn is lower for both light
nuclei (A<30) and heavy
nuclei (A>170) We can draw some conclusions from these two observations:
(i)
The force is attractive and sufficiently strong to produce a binding
energy of a few MeV per nucleon (ii) The constancy of the binding energy in the range 30 < A < 170 is a
consequence of the fact that the nuclear force is short-ranged Consider
a particular nucleon inside a sufficiently large nucleus