Proton (short for "Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional" or National Automobile Industry) is the first car manufacturer in Malaysia. Even, though their technology is based on Mitsubishi's.

Their models are:

  1. Proton Saga
  2. Proton Iswara
  3. Proton Wira aka Proton Persona
  4. Proton Perdana
  5. Proton Waja

They are not too bad. They're the cheapest in the market in Malaysia. You're satisfied until you found that the Proton car prices in UK and Australia are cheaper than in Malaysia.

Update October 2, 2000. Proton Waja.

See also
http://www.proton.com.my/
http://www.protonmania.com/

The Proton is also a Soviet-designed launch vehicle. It is used to transport satellites, spacecraft and space station modules into LEO. Despite troubles with the booster in 1999 and early 2000, the launch of the Zvezda module on 7/12/00 appears to have gone flawlessly...we just won't talk about how late it is.

It is a three-stage rocket. The first (lowest) stage is around 68 feet in length and has six liquid-fuelled rocket motors, producing a total of approximately 1.5 million lbs. of thrust. The first stage burns for approx. 2 minutes and 5 seconds, after which time its engines shut off and it separates to drop away onto the Kazakh plains.

The second stage has four engines, and burns for three-plus minutes, after which it, too, drops off.

The final powered stage is the third stage; this has a single engine (also liquid-fuelled) providing approximately 125,000 lbs of thrust and burning for around 4-5 minutes. When this stage is done, it drops away, leaving the rocket to deploy its payload into orbit.

A hydrogen ion - the cation derived from a hydrogen atom by the removal of the electron. The concentration, or more correctly, the activity of protons in a solution is quantified by pH, the negative decadic logarithm of the molar activity of the hydrogen ions in the solution.

Proton can be used to refer specifically to the cation derived from protium, the most abundant isotope of hydrogen (with nucleon number unity), or more generally to the cation derived from any atom of naturally occurring hydrogen, of which a small proportion is deuterium.

The equivalent name for the cation derived from a heavier isotope of hydrogen would be a deuteron (deuterium) or a triton (tritium).

A proton is a elementary subatomic particle. It has one "unit" of positive charge (approximately 1.602 x 10-19 coulombs), and a mass of 1.67262 x 10-27 kg, about 1836 times heavier than an electron, and just slightly less than a neutron.

It, along with neutrons, makes up the nucleus of an atom. The number of protons in the nucleus determines the chemical properties of the atom - which element an atom is. A single proton forms the nucleus of Hydrogen (H+ is a proton without an electron).

A proton is considered a type of baryon, and is made up of 2 up quarks, and one down quark. It is also the lightest known baryon. It also has an antiparticle, an antiproton.

The existence of the nucleus of the atom was first theorized by Ernest Rutherford in 1911, in an attempt to explain his results during an experiment involving the scattering of alpha particles. In 1919, he discovered the existence of the proton, finding it as a product of the disintegration of the atomic nucleus. He gave it it's name, derived from the Greek word "protus", meaning first.

In 1965, Hofstadter and some collaborators used a linear accelerator to shoot high energy electrons at hydrogen, and using the deflection of electrons going by the proton to determine it's size - approximately 10-13 cm in diameter. This experiment also raised the first questions as to whether there was anything inside the proton (leading to quarks).

Some theories in physics have recently opened the possibility of proton decay - that is, that a proton may not be stable, and can eventually decay into lighter products. However, if this does occur, it takes an extremely long time to do so - experimental evidence has strongly suggested that protons have a minimum half-life of at least 1031 years - as no proton decay has ever been observed.

Sources:
Encyclopedia.com, http://www.encyclopedia.com/articlesnew/10568.html
Proton: encyclopedia article from Wikipedia, http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Proton
Traveling to the Heart of Matter with HERA, Chapter 1, http://www.desy.de/f/hera/engl/chap1.html

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