What is an isotope simple definition?


Sharing is Caring


An isotope is one of two or more species of atoms of a chemical element with the same atomic number and position in the periodic table and nearly identical chemical behavior but with different atomic masses and physical properties. Every chemical element has one or more isotopes.

What is an isotope and example?

Isotope โ†’ Isotopes are atoms with the same number of protons, but differ in numbers of neutrons. Isotopes are different forms of a single element. Example – Carbon 12 and Carbon 14 are both isotopes of carbon, one with 6 neutrons and one with 8 neutrons.

What is an isotope in a sentence?

Radioactive elements have different isotopes that decay at different rates. When uranium is bombarded with neutrons, the two isotopes have differing nuclear reactions. The nuclei of the hydrogen isotopes are the proton, the deuteron, and the triton.

What are the 3 types of isotopes?

The common examples are the isotopes of hydrogen and carbon. If we talk about the element Hydrogen, it has three stable isotopes namely protium, deuterium, and tritium. These isotopes have the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons wherein protium has zero, deuterium has one and tritium has two.

What are 3 examples of isotopes?

The number of nucleons (both protons and neutrons) in the nucleus is the atom’s mass number, and each isotope of a given element has a different mass number. For example, carbon-12, carbon-13, and carbon-14 are three isotopes of the element carbon with mass numbers 12, 13, and 14, respectively.

What is an isotope symbol?

YouTube video

What is the opposite of isotope?

There are no categorical antonyms for isotope. The noun isotope is defined as: Any of two or more forms of an element where the atoms have the same number of protons, but a different number of neutrons within their nuclei. As a consequence, atoms of isotopes will have the same atomic number but a different mass number.

What is known as mass number?

mass number, in nuclear physics, the sum of the numbers of protons and neutrons present in the nucleus of an atom.

What is a isotope in biology?

(I-soh-tope) A form of a chemical element in which the atoms have the same number of protons (part of the nucleus of an atom) but with a different number of neutrons (part of the nucleus of an atom). For example, carbon 12, carbon 13, and carbon 14 are isotopes of carbon.

How are isotopes formed?

Isotopes can either form spontaneously (naturally) through radioactive decay of a nucleus (i.e., emission of energy in the form of alpha particles, beta particles, neutrons, and photons) or artificially by bombarding a stable nucleus with charged particles via accelerators or neutrons in a nuclear reactor.

Is an isotope an atom?

Like everything we see in the world, isotopes are a type of atom, the smallest unit of matter that retains all the chemical properties of an element. Isotopes are forms of a chemical element with specific properties. You can see the different chemical elements on the periodic table.

How do you identify isotopes?

YouTube video

What are properties of isotopes?

When it comes to the chemical properties of isotopes of a given element, they are nearly identical or identical. The chemical properties of different isotopes are nearly identical. However, the physical properties of isotopes such as mass, melting or boiling point, density, and freezing point are all different.

Who discovered isotopes?

Soddy in his lab at the University of Glasgow. In a letter to the editor published in the Dec. 4, 1913, issue of Nature, English radiochemist Frederick Soddy proposed the isotope conceptโ€”that elements could have more than one atomic weight. The idea led to his 1921 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

What are 5 uses of isotopes?

What are the five applications of isotopes? Radioactive isotopes have applications in agriculture, food processing, pest control, archaeology, and medicine.

What are the 2 types of isotopes?

The primary two types of isotopes are stable isotopes and radioactive (or unstable) isotopes. The stability of an isotope is generally determined by the ratio of protons and neutrons in its nucleus. An element with only one stable isotope is called a monoisotopic element.

How do isotopes work?

An isotope is one of two or more forms of the same chemical element. Different isotopes of an element have the same number of protons in the nucleus, giving them the same atomic number, but a different number of neutrons giving each elemental isotope a different atomic weight.

Is Oxygen an isotope?

Oxygen isotope species The element oxygen (O) is found in three naturally occurring stable isotopes, 18O, 17O, and 16O. The nucleus of each of these oxygen isotopes contains eight protons and either eight, nine, or ten neutrons, respectively.

How are isotopes important?

Radioactive isotopes have many useful applications. In medicine, for example, cobalt-60 is extensively employed as a radiation source to arrest the development of cancer. Other radioactive isotopes are used as tracers for diagnostic purposes as well as in research on metabolic processes.

Are all elements isotopes?

All elements are isotopes. Although all atoms of a given element have the same atomic number (number of protons), the atomic weight (number of protons and neutrons together) varies.

How do you draw an isotope?

YouTube video

Is carbon 12 an isotope?

There are three isotopes of carbon found in nature โ€“ carbon-12, carbon-13, and carbon-14. All three have six protons, but their neutron numbers – 6, 7, and 8, respectively – all differ.

Why isotopes have different number of neutrons?

Isotopes of an element differ in the number of neutrons in the nuclei so they have a different mass number as the mass number is the sum of a number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus.

Which two atoms are isotopes of the same element?

Atoms of the same element that contain the same number of protons, but different numbers of neutrons, are known as isotopes. Isotopes of any given element all contain the same number of protons, so they have the same atomic number (for example, the atomic number of helium is always 2).

Who discovered mass no?

The great scientist Ernest Rutherford who discovered the nucleus by splitting atoms using the gold foil experiment in the year 1911, is the one who came up with the idea of mass number.

Craving More Content?

Physics Network