How to Use proton in a Sentence

proton

noun
  • So imagine an atom, think of a proton.
    — Outside Online, 17 Sep. 2025
  • Muons, not electrons or protons, might hold the key.
    — Big Think, 19 Mar. 2026
  • The change is the size of about one-thousandth the width of a proton.
    — Marina Koren, The Atlantic, 3 Oct. 2017
  • This is the proton motive force.
    — Quanta Magazine, 20 Apr. 2026
  • Where the proton gets its spin is an even gnarlier puzzle.
    — Joseph Howlett, Scientific American, 6 Feb. 2026
  • Both its neutron count and its proton count are a magic number.
    — Artemis Spyrou, The Conversation, 7 Oct. 2024
  • This told them there was something hard and discrete at the center of the proton.
    — Amina Khan, latimes.com, 29 Mar. 2018
  • All carbon atoms have six protons and all oxygen atoms have eight protons.
    — Kelling Donald, The Conversation, 13 Oct. 2025
  • It hasn’t even been tested to the millimeter scale, let alone to the scale of a proton.
    — Thomas Lewton, Quanta Magazine, 10 July 2023
  • All of these protons and neurons, something else happens with them.
    — Rachel Handler, Vulture, 21 Nov. 2025
  • As things cooled, quarks formed and then condensed into protons and neutrons.
    — Quanta Magazine, 2 Apr. 2025
  • To an extent, this is similar to the question of where the mass of a proton is.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 3 Apr. 2023
  • All atoms with the same number of protons in their nuclei are the same element.
    — Kelling Donald, The Conversation, 13 Oct. 2025
  • And what converts a proton into a neutron?
    — Paul Sutter, Space.com, 14 Oct. 2025
  • Yee found that the same proton pump also helps diatoms make their tough silica shell.
    — Kevin Hartnett, Quanta Magazine, 6 July 2023
  • This force binds quarks and gluons together to make protons and neutrons.
    — Shalma Wegsman, Quanta Magazine, 5 Sep. 2025
  • Three quarks come together to form protons and neutrons alike, which in turn form the nuclei of atoms.
    — Joseph Howlett, Scientific American, 6 Feb. 2026
  • In the near-collisions, some lead atoms lost three of their protons, turning them into gold atoms.
    — George Petras, USA Today, 17 May 2025
  • In the case of a passing lead atom, the loss of three protons through this process results in the formation of gold.
    — Victoria Corless, Space.com, 13 May 2025
  • Now, the boy prepared to sit still as a statue for a session of proton therapy.
    — Grant Stringer, Mercury News, 18 June 2026
  • The radius of a proton varies depending on whether its charge or its mass is being measured.
    — Will Stephenson, Harper's Magazine, 16 Aug. 2023
  • What the target is made of depends on how many protons the researchers want in the final product.
    — Stephanie Pappas, Scientific American, 14 May 2024
  • This creates a deuteron, which is just a fancy name for a proton and a neutron bound together.
    — Paul Sutter, Space.com, 14 Oct. 2025
  • The protons combine with sulfate ions to make sulfuric acid.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 26 Feb. 2026
  • The protons are destroyed, and the energy of the crash gives rise to new particles in their wake.
    — Clara Moskowitz, Scientific American, 17 Mar. 2026
  • Each atom of the stuff packs a whopping 118 protons into its dense center.
    — Michael Block, Scientific American, 19 Mar. 2018
  • Quantum weirdness extends to the proton, too.
    — ArsTechnica, 14 Apr. 2026
  • As the universe cooled, these processes stopped and the ratio of protons to neutrons was set.
    — Anne-Katherine Burns, The Conversation, 26 July 2023
  • Neutrons are the neutral counterpart to protons, one of the constituent parts of an atom.
    — Briley Lewis, Popular Science, 5 Sep. 2024
  • The idea was that the presence of a neutron would alter how electrons and muons perceive the proton’s charge.
    — ArsTechnica, 14 Apr. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'proton.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: