Abstract.

The essential aspect of contemporary physics is to understand properties of nucleonic matter that constitutes the world around us. Over the years research in nuclear physics has provided strong guidance in understanding the basic principles of nuclear interactions. But, the scenario of nuclear physics changed drastically as the new generation of accelerators started providing more and more rare isotopes, which are away from the line of stability.  These weakly bound nuclei are found to exhibit new forms of nuclear matter and unprecedented exotic behaviour. The low breakup thresholds of these rare nuclei are posing new challenges to both theory and experiments. Fortunately, nature has provided a few loosely bound stable nuclei that have been studied thoroughly for decades. Attempts are being made to find a consistent picture for the unstable nuclei starting from their stable counterparts. Some significant differences in the structure and reaction mechanisms are found.

Keywords:  Stable and unstable Li and He; halo; skin; soft dipole resonance.

Pacs Nos.  25.80.Ls; 21.10.Gv; 21.60.Gx; 24.30.Go; 27.20.+n