"continuing this analogy, one can say that the nuclear forces are like the van der Waals forces that hold these atoms together in a liquid droplet (liquid helium, neon, ...). This analogy is confirmed by the relative smallness of the nuclear forces: the binding energy of the protons and neutrons in the nucleus is of the order of 10-20 MeV - very large compared to chemical energies (electron volts), but small compared to mpc2 = 940 MeV. "