Talk:Cross section (physics)
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I made an attempt at basic cleanup by adding an intro paragraph and letting the rest be in sections below. I am not a physicist however, so the efforts of anyone who can make sure I didn't oversimplify or otherwise screw it up would be appreciated. Knotnic 15:14, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I guess I'll take a stab at this one too after I get the scattering article. The concept of event cross section isn't restricted to nuclear and particle physics. It's a much more generalized idea than that. Tarchon 00:49, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I was doing my Physics homework and this page popped up. I noticed that it claimed the Nuclear Diameter to be 10−12 cm. Nuclear Diameter is actually measured in fm (femto-meters) which is 10−15 m, or 10−13 cm. Nuclear Radius is 10−12 cm. This unfortunatly makes the next sentence confusing: πr2 to give the correct size of a barn as 10−24 cm2 or 10−28 m2. Karplusan 03:28, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Tarchon. Cross section is a general concept used in many areas and has it's own page to which we can add explanation of the phenomonon, physical meaning, mysteries of, and the like. Nuclear cross section is a specific type of cross section which I think should have it's own page because in the nuclear field this parameter is given a certain symbol (lowercase sigma), and even within that there are several divisions and sub-divisions of nuclear cross sections which could be subheadings on this page or have their own page, such as neutron cross section (which exists as its own page already), absorbtion cross section (separate page merged with general absorbtion spectrum information), gamma cross section... maybe even proton cross sections (which is why I found this page because I was trying to find information on it for a research project). I added a few things to the page on nuclear cross section which are commonly used in this field, and it could definitely be expanded much more. ~Aquamarine19 (~AK 11:02, 14 December 2006 (UTC))