Background

When a neutron is added to a nucleus with an unpaired neutron then a neutron-neutron spin pair is formed. This shows up as a peak in the graph of the incremental binding energy of neutrons,

The proton number of magnesium is 12. The generally higher level of incremental binding energy for N≤12 compared to the values for N>12 relects the effect of the formation of neutron-proton spin pairs.

A reasonable estimate of the binding energy of a neutron can be obtained by projecting forward the trend in the previous two trough values as shown below. BEsource1.gif//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

When this procedure is carried out for all cases for which it is feasible a distribution of values is obtained. The plot of the cumulative frequencies of those values is shown below.

The average of those values is 2.09851 million electron volts (MeV). ,