I am struggling to understand the difference between Mass Number and atomic mass unit (AMU). I read several posts on this site but still confused. Mass Number seems like a number (i.e. number of nucleons in nucleus) whereas AMU is in KG. We do we need 2 units? Also, for a given element both of them seem to be very close to each other. For example mass number for a Carbon -12 is 12 and in AMU it is around 12 too. Any reason for this?
[Physics] Difference between Mass Number and atomic mass unit (AMU)
binding-energydefinitionmassnuclear-physics
Related Solutions
To understand binding energy and mass defects in nuclei, it helps to understand where the mass of the proton comes from.
The news about the recent Higgs discovery emphasizes that the Higgs mechanism gives mass to elementary particles. This is true for electrons and for quarks which are elementary particles (as far as we now know), but it is not true for protons or neutrons or for nuclei. For example, a proton has a mass of approximately $938 \frac{\mathrm{MeV}}{c^2}$, of which the rest mass of its three valence quarks only contributes about $11\frac{\mathrm{MeV}}{c^2}$; much of the remainder can be attributed to the gluons' quantum chromodynamics binding energy. (The gluons themselves have zero rest mass.) So most of the "energy" from the rest mass energy of the universe is actually binding energy of the quarks inside nucleons.
When nucleons bind together to create nuclei it is the "leakage" of this quark/gluon binding energy between the nucleons that determines the overall binding energy of the nucleus. As you state, the electrical repulsion between the protons will tend to decrease this binding energy.
So, I don't think that it is possible to come up with a simple geometrical model to explain the binding energy of nuclei the way you are attempting with your $\left(1\right)$ through $\left(15\right)$ rules. For example, your rules do not account for the varying ratios of neutrons to protons in atomic nuclei. It is possible to have the same total number of nucleons as $\sideset{^{56}}{}{\text{Fe}}$ and the binding energies will be quite different the further you move away from $\sideset{^{56}}{}{\text{Fe}}$ and the more unstable the isotope will be.
To really understand the binding energy of nuclei it would be necessary to fully solve the many body quantum mechanical nucleus problem. This cannot be done exactly but it can be approached through many approximate and numerical calculations. In the 1930's, Bohr did come up with the Liquid Drop model that can give approximations to the binding energy of nuclei, but it does fail to account for the binding energies at the magic numbers where quantum mechanical filled shells make a significant difference. However, the simple model you are talking about will be incapable of making meaningful predictions.
EDIT: The original poster clarified that the sign of the binding energy seems to be confusing. Hopefully this picture will help:
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This graph shows how the potential energy of the neutron and proton that makes up a deuterium nucleus varies as the distance between the neutron and proton changes. The zero value on the vertical axis represents the potential energy when the neutron and proton are far from each other. So when the neutron and proton are bound in a deuteron, the average potential energy will be negative which is why the binding energy per nucleon is a negative number - that is we can get fusion energy by taking the separate neutron and proton and combining them into a deuteron. Note that the binding energy per nucleon of deuterium is $-1.1 \, \mathrm{MeV}$ and how that fits comfortably in the dip of this potential energy curve.
The statement that $\sideset{^{56}}{}{\text{Fe}}$ has the highest binding energy per nucleon means that lighter nuclei fusing towards $\text{Fe}$ will generate energy and heavier elements fissioning towards $\text{Fe}$ will generate energy because the $\text{Fe}$ ground state has the most negative binding energy per nucleon. Hope that makes it clear(er).
By the way, this image is from a very helpful article which should also be helpful for understanding this issue.
A nucleon in nuclear context is simply not the same as one in a free context. Not in mass nor in form factor. These corrections are not known in complete detail but there are parameterizations of them that are used in nuclear and particle physics experiments. In my disertation project we used a parameterization due to de Forest, which is a popular but now somewhat dated model.
Best Answer
The Mass Number is the number of nucleons (protons+nucleons) in a nucleus, so it is a dimensionless magnitude. The atomic mass unit (AMU) however is a mass unit, it measures mass.
1 AMU is defined as the twelfth of the mass of a C12 atom. It was defined this way so that the mass of an atom and its mass number were roughly equal. C12 has 6 protons and 6 neutrons, so you can think of an AMU being the average mass of a proton and a neutron. This is not exactly true, since part of the mass of the nucleons becomes energy that bonds the nucleus together.
Carbon has three isotopes, but C12 is the most common one (98,9 % of carbon is C12), so the mass of carbon is roughly 12 AMU.