What is the difference between different isotopes?

What is the difference between different isotopes?

Isotopes. 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.

What is always different in the isotope?

Isotopes are members of a family of an element that all have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons. The number of protons in a nucleus determines the element’s atomic number on the Periodic Table.

What is the difference between the three isotopes?

There are three isotopes of the element hydrogen: hydrogen, deuterium, and tritium. How do we distinguish between them? They each have one single proton (Z = 1), but differ in the number of their neutrons. Hydrogen has no neutron, deuterium has one, and tritium has two neutrons.

What characteristic of an element differs between isotopes?

The number of neutrons in the nucleus determines the specific isotope of an element. The only difference between isotopes of an element is the number of neutrons present.

Why do isotopes have different physical properties?

Isotopes of an element have different physical properties because they have different mass numbers. When it comes to physical properties of isotopes including mass, melting or boiling point, density, and freezing point, they are all different. The physical properties of any isotope are largely determined by its mass.

Why do different isotopes of an element generally have the same physical and chemical properties?

Atoms of the same element that differ in their numbers of neutrons are called isotopes. Different isotopes of an element generally have the same physical and chemical properties because they have the same numbers of protons andelectrons. Atoms need a certain ratio of neutrons to protons to have a stable nucleus.

Why are some isotopes more unstable than others?

An unstable element can be unstable due several reasons. The presence of a high number of neutrons compared to the number of protons is one such reason. In this type of isotopes, radioactive decay occurs in order to obtain a stable state. Here, neutrons are converted into protons and electrons. This can be given as below.

How are isotopes different from elements and chemical elements?

Furthermore, one other difference between isotopes and elements is that the isotopes have different numbers of neutrons, but chemical elements can have either the same number of neutrons or a different number of neutrons; but they never have the same number of protons.

What’s the difference between an isobar and an isotope?

Isotopes and Isobars. What are Isobars? Isobar is that element which differs in the chemical property but has the same physical property. So, we can say that isobars are those elements which have a different atomic number but the same mass number.

How is the mass of an isotope determined?

Isotopes are defined first by their element and then by the sum of the protons and neutrons present. Carbon-12 (or 12 C) contains six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons; therefore, it has a mass number of 12 amu (six protons and six neutrons).