Since we will focus in the beginning on single-particle degrees of freedom and mean-field approaches before we start with nuclear forces and many-body approaches like the nuclear shell-model, there are some features to be noted

• In the discussion of the liquid drop model and binding energies, we note that the total binding energy is not that different from the sum of the individual neutron and proton masses.

One may thus infer that intrinsic properties of nucleons in a nucleus are close to those of free nucleons.

• In the discussion of the neutron separation energies for the oxygen isotopes, we note a clear staggering effect between odd and even isotopes with the even ones being more bound (larger separation energies). We will later link this to strong pairing correlations in nuclei.