Topic summary
Nuclear spin
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Spin quantum number.
Nuclear spin
Atomic nuclei also have spins. The nuclear spin I is a fixed property of each nucleus and may be either an integer or a half-integer. The component mI of nuclear spin parallel to the z-axis can have (2I + 1) values I, I−1, ..., −I. For example, a N nucleus has I = 1, so that there are 3 possible orientations relative to the z-axis, corresponding to states mI = +1, 0 and −1.