Eli5. What happen when two atoms collide?
In: Physics
Depends on the energy and particular atoms involved. They can bounce off each other, undergo some chemical reaction and then the products are emitted, undergo a nuclear reaction and emit the product ions (the elecrons would be at least partly scattered at such energies), or undergo more exotic reactions to produce high energy particles. Each next step takes more energy.
Atoms are not used because they are neutral, so it’s hard to get them going fast – you really want something charged so you can accelerate it with EM fields.
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