Benford's Law in Nuclear Structure Physics

We investigate Benford's law based on the 2003 version of atomic mass evaluation. It is demonstrated that the first non-zero digit distribution functions for a number of experimental quantities are in reasonable agreement with those predicted by Benford's law. The data that we investigate here include 3001 sets of S_p, 3060 sets of S_n, 2943 sets of two-neutron separation energies S_2n, 2826 sets of two-proton separation energies S_2p, 1643 sets of β⁺-decay energies Q(β⁺), 1243 sets of β^--decay energies Q(β⁻), 2595 sets of double β-decay energies Q(ββ⁻), and 2711 sets of energies in electron-capture proton processes Q(ϵp). The first non-zero digits of these data favor the smaller ones in a logarithmic pattern.