Yes, thank you, this was the intuition I was missing! Protons almost never collide directly with a nucleus because most of an atom is empty space; a proton bea

Yes, thank you, this was the intuition I was missing! Protons almost never collide directly with a nucleus because most of an atom is empty space; a proton beam disrupts the matter it's passing through mostly by electrostatic effect, and that's a function of position and time!