deuteron

noun

deu·ter·on ˈdü-tə-ˌrän

also ˈdyü-

: a deuterium nucleus

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web The deuteron is a bound state of a proton and a neutron, and the binding comes from the strong force, which is carried by gluons. —

Scientific American, 1 Feb. 2022 In the first step of this fusion process, two protons inside the sun fuse into a deuteron while giving off a neutrino and a positron—the antiparticle of the electron. —

Scientific American, 1 Feb. 2022 Then the deuteron captures another proton to form a helium isotope and emits a gamma-ray photon. —

Scientific American, 1 Feb. 2022 But the police couldn’t pin the crimes on Kamen because the scientist had been locked away in his lab for the past three days, lobbing deuteron particles at a tiny sample of graphite with his colleague, the chemist Samuel Ruben. —

Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, 25 Feb. 2020 Phoenix’s neutron generators fire deuterons into chambers full of tritium, an even heavier form of hydrogen that has a proton and two neutrons as its nucleus. —

The Economist, 23 Nov. 2019 The particles accelerated, though, are not electrons but deuterons. —

The Economist, 23 Nov. 2019 See More

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'deuteron.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.