The harmonic oscillator (a shifted one by a negative constant) provides also a very good approximation to most bound single-particle states. Furthermore, it serves as a starting point in building up our picture of nuclei, in particular how we define magic numbers and systems with one nucleon added to (or removed from) a closed-shell core nucleus. The figure here shows the various harmonic oscillator states, with those obtained with a Woods-Saxon potential as well, including a spin-orbit splitting (to be discussed below).