Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online.In nuclear and particle physics, the concept of a cross section is used to express the likelihood of interaction between particles.When particles are thrown against a foil made of a certain substance, the cross section ¿ is a hypothetical area measure around the target particles tha ...Full description
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online.In nuclear and particle physics, the concept of a cross section is used to express the likelihood of interaction between particles.When particles are thrown against a foil made of a certain substance, the cross section ¿ is a hypothetical area measure around the target particles that represents a surface. If a particle of the beam crosses this surface, there will be some kind of interaction.The term is derived from the purely classical picture of point-like projectiles directed to an area that includes a solid target. Assuming that an interaction will occur if the projectile hits the solid, and not at all if it misses, the total interaction probability for the single projectile will be the ratio of the area of the section of the solid to the total targeted area.