We start our tour of experimental data and our interpretations by considering the chain of oxygen isotopes. In the exercises below you will be asked to perform similar analyses for other chains of isotopes.

The oxygen isotopes are the heaviest isotopes for which the drip line is well established. The drip line is defined as the point where adding one more nucleon leads to an unbound nucleus. Below we will see that we can define the dripline by studying the separation energy. Where the neutron (proton) separation energy changes sign as a function of the number of neutrons (protons) defines the neutron (proton) drip line.