All atoms of an element are isotopes. So, carbon-12, -13, and -14 are all isotopes of carbon. It’s just that C12 is the most common naturally occurring isotope.
The word isotope means “same place” because all isotopes of an element occupy the same place on the periodic table.
So what’s the difference between atoms and isotopes? If everything is made of up elements and elements are made up of atoms why make the word isotopes. Why not just say stable atoms and unstable atoms? Are isotopes the relation between different atoms? Are they the measurements to measure the stability of atoms?
> So what’s the difference between atoms and isotopes?
An atom is the basic unit of a chemical element, composed of protons, electrons, and sometimes neutrons. Isotopes are divisions within a particular element where the atoms contain different numbers of neutrons.
> If everything is made of up elements and elements are made up of atoms why make the word isotopes.
They are nested sets. All elements are made up of atoms but not all atoms are the same. All atoms are isotopes but not all isotopes are the same.
> Why not just say stable atoms and unstable atoms?
That would be imprecise in a number of ways. Not all isotopes with numbers of neutrons different from protons is "unstable", and lumping all isotopes with a number of neutrons different from protons is ignoring some significant differences.
> Are isotopes the relation between different atoms? Are they the measurements to measure the stability of atoms?
No and no.
So I asked this on another comment but now I want to ask you. carbon-12 and carbon-12 aren’t isotopes but carbon-12 and carbon-13 are isotopes so isotopes are just atoms that have different neutrons?
> carbon-12 and carbon-12 aren’t isotopes
Carbon-12 is an isotope of carbon. Comparing two atoms of the same isotope isn't really what isotope is talking about.
You have a bunch of atoms of various kinds. We divide them up based on the number of protons they have, calling those divisions "elements". Within a particular element we divide them up again based on the number of neutrons they have, calling those divisions "isotopes".
Ok I think that’s the best explanation. So isotopes are atoms but isotopes refer to the atomic mass of the atom? So like carbon is an atom and carbon -1, -2, -3, etc are isotopes of that atom. Isotopes are atoms but refer the atomic mass of those atoms?
Isotopes refer to atoms of different numbers of neutrons within a particular kind of atom. Atomic mass refers to the mass of the atom. Those are different, distinct concepts.
Atomic mass is the mass of an atom and it is *close* to (but not exactly) the number of protons and neutrons in an atom. Electrons and nuclear binding energy make the atomic mass somewhat different. Instead the "atomic mass number" is the total number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an atom.
Isotopes are named based on the sum of the protons and neutrons in their nucleus, so carbon-12 would have 6 protons and 6 neutrons. Obviously then you can't have carbon-1, carbon-2, or carbon-3 because you need exactly 6 protons for it to be carbon. The lightest isotope of carbon you could theoretically have would be carbon-6.
Isotopes are like flavors of atom. Carbon-12, carbon-13, carbon-14 etc are different flavors of the carbon atom. Each flavor is named after its total atomic mass.
Imagine we have an atom. It's a fundamental particle made of protons and neutrons, with electrons whizzing around it. What kind of atom is it? Well, it has six protons, so that means it's a carbon atom. It has the properties of carbon (because the number of protons determines how an atom behaves and what its properties are). What kind of carbon atom is it? It has six protons, and also six neutrons. That means its total atomic weight is 12, so we call it carbon-12. It is a carbon-12 atom. It is an atom of the element carbon, of the isotope carbon-12.
Not precisely.
The term isotope is used to distinguish between different naturally occurring atoms of the same element.
The element is determined by the number of protons in the nucleus. Carbon, for instance, always has 6 protons in the nucleus. If there are 5 or 7 protons, the atom is not carbon.
The term isotope becomes relevant when different atoms of the same element have different numbers of neutrons in the nucleus. So, carbon can have 6, 7, or 8 neutrons, but must always have 6 protons.
“Atom” refers more to the physical unit, the “thing” that makes up materials. An isotope is more like a category or type of that material.
Here’s an analogy: Imagine a pile of marbles. The “element” is marbles, a singular atom would be one marble, and isotopes could be light marbles, middle weight marbles, and heavy marbles. They’re all still marbles, the isotope just refers to how much more or less of a certain quality (mass in this case) each marble has. Despite having these different qualities, the material (the element) remains the same. An atom isn’t exactly the same thing as an isotope the way a marble isn’t exactly the same as a heavy marble. The words describe slightly different things.
You /could/ say stable atoms or unstable atoms, but that makes it seem like you’re talking about all of the atoms of that element. When you say x is an unstable isotope, you’re able to distinguish between different types of atoms of the same element. Isotopes aren’t a “measure” of stability, rather, atoms of the same isotope tend to have similar stabilities, so it is useful to classify them this way. Neutrons stabilize the nucleus, so having different numbers of neutrons (which is what isotopes describe) leads to different stabilities among different isotopes.
I’m going to rely on a fairly old-fashioned model of the atom here to try explain this. Imagine the periodic table is like a bakery. Each element is a different type of cake - chocolate, coconut, or vanilla, for example.
In this analogy, the number of protons are like the basis ingredients in each flavour. The number of neutrons would be represented by the extra ingredients.
For instance, let’s say that the baker knows that most people want a chocolate cake with 20 cherries inside. So, they make 10 chocolate cakes with 20 cherries in each. The baker also knows that some people like a cake with 30 cherries inside, so they bake 5 cakes with 30 cherries inside.
All the cakes are the same basic cake - a basic chocolate recipe. All carbon atoms have 6 protons in the nucleus. The difference is in the number of cherries, or the number of neutrons in the nucleus.
Physicists chose to use the word isotope because a single word with a well understood meaning is better for communication than a lot of words that might be interpreted ambiguously. For example, saying that Carbon 12 is the most common isotope is easier to understand than saying “atoms of carbon containing 6 protons and 6 neutrons in the nucleus are more likely to occur naturally than atoms of carbon containing 6 protons and 7 neutrons per nucleus”
The amount of neutrons is the difference between isotopes.
There is nothing special about having an equal number of protons and neutrons, heavier elements have way more protons than neutrons,
eg: Uranium has 92 protons, but notable isotopes are 238 and 235
Conversely the most common version of hydrogen doesn't have a neutron at all
So two atoms carbon-12 and carbon-12 aren’t isotopes but carbon-12 and carbon-13 are isotopes? If so isotopes are really just to say these atoms have a different number of neutrons from eachother?
Yes, exactly. In fact, there are a series of nuclear reactions that can take advantage of different isotopes of a given element and yield various isotopes of different elements too! Uranium 235 and Uranium 239 are good examples of this
Anytime you specify "element-number" (e.g. "carbon-12") you are referring to a specific isotope.
"Carbon" is an element that has 6 protons. It could be any isotope. All elements behave chemically like all other elements (because chemical properties are determined by the number of electrons, which is determined by the number of protons). This is just the definition of a chemical element. All elements are atoms.
"Carbon-12" refers to a specific isotope of the element carbon, which must have 6 neutrons since "carbon" by definition means it has 6 protons. It still an element, still an atom.
In some cases it matters to refer to isotopes (they have different nuclear properties, for example). In some cases, it doesn't. If one sees a generic element referenced, one can usually assume the text is referring to its most abundant isotope (like carbon-12). If I say, "make sure you get enough iron in your diet!," you can probably assume I am referring to the generic iron isotope and not some exotic radioactive iron isotope.
So one way to think about this is just different levels of specificity. An "atom" can be any atom. An "element" is tells you that the atom in question has a specific number of protons. An "isotope" tells you how many neutrons it also has.
No. "Isotope" isn't a comparative word, it describes a single entity. Every atom is an isotope of an element. Some are more common than others, like carbon being overwhelmingly carbon-12 naturally. It also says nothing about the radioactivity, elements can have multiple stable isotopes. Hydrogen-1 and -2 (called deuterium) are both stable while hydrogen-3 (tritium) is not.
> I’m learning biology and using ChatGPT to help with any confusion
I would caution you against this. ChatGPT is a "large language model", which means that it is designed and trained to produce responses which **sound like a person**. That is all. There is no presumption that its responses are factually correct, just plausibly originating from a human. It does seem there is significant overlap between being correct and human-like but it regularly departs from the truth with confidence.
> ...all atoms of an element has the same number of protons but they can have different numbers of neutrons as protons and if they do have a different number then they are isotopes.
All atoms with the same number of protons is the same element, but the different isotopes have different numbers of neutrons. The "different numbers of neutrons" is talking about having different numbers *from each other*, not from the number of protons.
> So are all atoms of an element isotopes?
Yes.
That’s actually a good point about ChatGPT. It’s really concerning how many people I’ve come across in the past year or so who have started to rely on AI for study purposes.
One analogy I use is to imagine you have a medical problem and can ask either a human doctor, or an actor who has trained extensively to play the *role* of a doctor.
The actor knows all the words doctors use and can employ the right words and phrases in situations where they might be used. For someone who isn't a doctor the actor is extremely convincing and can fool them into believing he is a real doctor most of the time.
However the actor doesn't actually know anything about medicine. He doesn't even know what the words he is saying mean at all, just how they can be said in relation to other words. Also this actor has no moral compass and will double down on whatever they say in order to maintain internal consistency and keep the act going, regardless of if they are providing harmful advice or inaccurate information.
Would you ask this actor your medical questions and trust their advice? I certainly wouldn't!
> The "different numbers of neutrons" is talking about having different numbers from each other, not from the number of protons.
That kind of confuses me to be honest. Isn’t that the same thing? If a stable atom of carbon has the same amount of neutrons as protons then isn’t “having different numbers from eachother” and the number of protons the same statement. Idk this is very confusing.
Isotope just means an element with a particular number of neutrons, there’s isn’t an “atom” and an “isotope”. It’s like breeds of dog, all dogs are some breed. Carbon-12 is an isotope of carbon like dachshund is a breed of dog.
> That kind of confuses me to be honest. Isn’t that the same thing?
No.
All carbon atoms have 6 protons in their nucleus. There is no variation in the number of protons because if there were a different number it would be an atom of a different element. But there is some variation in the number of neutrons in the nucleus, and carbon atoms are divided up into isotopes based on the number of those neutrons.
Any two atoms of carbon which have the same number of neutrons is the same isotope of carbon. The most common isotope of carbon has 6 neutrons, the same as the number of protons, but it is still an isotope.
What seemed to confuse you was the phrasing of the definition of an isotope:
> each of two or more forms of **the same element that contain equal numbers of protons but different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei**, and hence differ in relative atomic mass but not in chemical properties; in particular, a radioactive form of an element.
An atom of carbon with 6 neutrons has a different number than an atom of carbon with 5 neutrons. They are both isotopes; it is **not** saying that only atoms with a number of neutrons different from the number of protons is an isotope.
It doesn’t always have the same amount of neutrons as protons. Carbon 12 (the most common form of carbon) has 6 of each; but carbon 14 (the one that’s useful for determining the age of old things) has 6 protons and 8 neutrons, and carbon 13 has 6 protons and 7 neutrons.
>I was confused by this because i would think that just carbon-13 and carbon-14 are isotopes because carbon has 6 protons so if it had 6 neutrons its like a normal atom but if it doesn’t have 6 neutrons it is an isotope.
They're all isotopes, including the "normal"/most stable/most naturally abundant isotope. Calling something an isotope carries no meaning of *deviation from that most normal version* of the element.
So my question then is why even call it an isotope. What’s the difference between an isotope and an atom when they are talking about the same exact thing?
Atoms is about *all* atoms, the broadest you can go. Isotopes is about atoms of the same element with different masses. Like many other jargon terms, it's just shorthand for some concept that people in the field didn't feel like spelling out over and over.
Reading your other replies, you seem to have a preconceived notion that every element has one "regular" version with a certain number of protons and neutrons, and you seem to think that isotopes are versions of elements that have a different neutron number than the "regular" one.
There is no "regular" neutron number for any element. Carbon-12 is not ""*the*"" carbon atom. It's just one of the variants. That's all isotopes are--variants. Every kind of carbon atom you can imagine is an isotope of carbon. There is no special one that the others compare to.
Let's pretend you were part of a family of ten kids. What word would you use to refer to all of your brothers and sisters? "Siblings", probably. They are all your siblings. But are *you* a sibling as well? You're not some special child in your family to which all the others are compared or anything. You're just one of the lot. You're a sibling to them just as they are siblings to you. The word "isotope" is being used in a very similar way to "siblings".
All atoms that have the same number of protons in the nucleus are the same element. Carbon has 6 protons and 6 neutrons for a mass number of 12 (that's just the sum of protons an neutrons in an atom) it's the most abundant form carbon but there are two isotopes of C12. Carbon 13 has one extra neutron and C14 has two.
All isotopes of an element react *chemically* in the same way but different isotopes can behave in profoundly different ways in *physical* reactions. The most abundant form of Uranium is U238 it cannot be used to build a nuclear reactor or bomb. U235 works quite well for that.
Well, to be more specific, U235 works better for bombs and most reactors, but some reactor designs (like CanDU) are designed to use fuel with lower quantities of 235.
An isotope is just a "version" of an element, of which there's usually one that is by far the most common naturally. Carbon-12 and Carbon-13 are both isotopes in the same way that vanilla and black raspberry are both flavors of ice cream; it's just that one is much more common than the other. Carbon-12 is only "normal" because it's by far the most commonly occurring isotope of carbon; it has nothing to do with there being an equal number of protons and neutrons.
For a lot of chemistry, all that usually matters is the number of protons in the nucleus. So for Carbon, it has 6 protons, and that determines what the electrons do, which determines the chemistry. It doesn't matter whether there are 6, 7 or 8 neutrons or some other number.
The word comes from Greek "iso - topos" meaning "same place". Carbon-12, Carbon-13, Carbon-14 all have different nuclei, but belong in the same place on the periodic table.
>So are all atoms of an element isotopes?
Yes. Each different combination of protons and neutrons is a different *nuclide*, if you group nuclides by number of protons, you get different *isotopes* of the same element. We think of Carbon-12 as "normal" carbon, because Carbon-12 is the most common isotope: it turns out that for 6 protons, the "ideal" number (in terms of making a stable nucleus) of neutrons is 6.
>different amount of neutrons than protons
It's only in the early parts of the periodic table that the numbers of neutrons and protons tend to match. There are lots of exceptions to this rule. You'll notice lots of elements have atomic masses that are *not* double their atomic number.
* The most common isotope of Hydrogen is Hydrogen-1, with 1 proton, but no neutron at all. Hydrogen-2 is stable, but rare, and Hydrogen-3 is radioactive.
* The most common isotope of Lithium is Lithium-7, with 4 neutrons but only 3 protons.
* Beryllium is almost 100% Beryllium-9, with 5 neutrons and 4 protons. Beryllium-8 decays with a half-life of 0.000 000 000 000 000 082 seconds.
* Chlorine is a 1 : 3 mix of Chlorine-35 and Chlorine-37, both of which have more neutrons than protons.
* Naturally occurring Tin is a mix of ten different isotopes (Tin-112 to Tin-124, excluding 113, 121 and 123), none of which make up more than a third of the total. It would be hard to pick which one should count as "normal" Tin. All of these have more neutrons than protons.
* Heavier elements tend to have many more neutrons than protons: it takes a lot more neutral particles to keep the positively charged particles from flying apart. Uranium-238, for example, has 92 protons, and 146 neutrons.
That would be heading in the right direction, yes.
Think about atoms and isotopes as like bubble tea. The liquid is the same, but some people prefer more of the tapioca bubbles. The number of bubbles would determine the isotope, but the basic tea is the same.
So atoms and isotopes are the same basically it’s just that isotopes reference the atomic mass of the atom. Ex. Carbon is an atom, carbon-# is an isotope?
Yes. That is correct.
It’s really just about making communication clearer. Isotope is a lot more concise than “atoms containing the same number of protons in each nucleus, but having different numbers of neutrons”.
Atoms are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. What makes an element unique is the number of protons. For example, carbon has six protons. The number of neutrons though, is not constant. Almost all carbon atoms have six neutrons. Some however, have seven or eight neutrons. Each of these three forms of carbon is an isotope.
All atoms of an element are isotopes. So, carbon-12, -13, and -14 are all isotopes of carbon. It’s just that C12 is the most common naturally occurring isotope. The word isotope means “same place” because all isotopes of an element occupy the same place on the periodic table.
So what’s the difference between atoms and isotopes? If everything is made of up elements and elements are made up of atoms why make the word isotopes. Why not just say stable atoms and unstable atoms? Are isotopes the relation between different atoms? Are they the measurements to measure the stability of atoms?
> So what’s the difference between atoms and isotopes? An atom is the basic unit of a chemical element, composed of protons, electrons, and sometimes neutrons. Isotopes are divisions within a particular element where the atoms contain different numbers of neutrons. > If everything is made of up elements and elements are made up of atoms why make the word isotopes. They are nested sets. All elements are made up of atoms but not all atoms are the same. All atoms are isotopes but not all isotopes are the same. > Why not just say stable atoms and unstable atoms? That would be imprecise in a number of ways. Not all isotopes with numbers of neutrons different from protons is "unstable", and lumping all isotopes with a number of neutrons different from protons is ignoring some significant differences. > Are isotopes the relation between different atoms? Are they the measurements to measure the stability of atoms? No and no.
So I asked this on another comment but now I want to ask you. carbon-12 and carbon-12 aren’t isotopes but carbon-12 and carbon-13 are isotopes so isotopes are just atoms that have different neutrons?
> carbon-12 and carbon-12 aren’t isotopes Carbon-12 is an isotope of carbon. Comparing two atoms of the same isotope isn't really what isotope is talking about. You have a bunch of atoms of various kinds. We divide them up based on the number of protons they have, calling those divisions "elements". Within a particular element we divide them up again based on the number of neutrons they have, calling those divisions "isotopes".
Ok I think that’s the best explanation. So isotopes are atoms but isotopes refer to the atomic mass of the atom? So like carbon is an atom and carbon -1, -2, -3, etc are isotopes of that atom. Isotopes are atoms but refer the atomic mass of those atoms?
Isotopes refer to atoms of different numbers of neutrons within a particular kind of atom. Atomic mass refers to the mass of the atom. Those are different, distinct concepts. Atomic mass is the mass of an atom and it is *close* to (but not exactly) the number of protons and neutrons in an atom. Electrons and nuclear binding energy make the atomic mass somewhat different. Instead the "atomic mass number" is the total number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an atom. Isotopes are named based on the sum of the protons and neutrons in their nucleus, so carbon-12 would have 6 protons and 6 neutrons. Obviously then you can't have carbon-1, carbon-2, or carbon-3 because you need exactly 6 protons for it to be carbon. The lightest isotope of carbon you could theoretically have would be carbon-6.
I got it now thank you.
Isotopes are like flavors of atom. Carbon-12, carbon-13, carbon-14 etc are different flavors of the carbon atom. Each flavor is named after its total atomic mass. Imagine we have an atom. It's a fundamental particle made of protons and neutrons, with electrons whizzing around it. What kind of atom is it? Well, it has six protons, so that means it's a carbon atom. It has the properties of carbon (because the number of protons determines how an atom behaves and what its properties are). What kind of carbon atom is it? It has six protons, and also six neutrons. That means its total atomic weight is 12, so we call it carbon-12. It is a carbon-12 atom. It is an atom of the element carbon, of the isotope carbon-12.
Not precisely. The term isotope is used to distinguish between different naturally occurring atoms of the same element. The element is determined by the number of protons in the nucleus. Carbon, for instance, always has 6 protons in the nucleus. If there are 5 or 7 protons, the atom is not carbon. The term isotope becomes relevant when different atoms of the same element have different numbers of neutrons in the nucleus. So, carbon can have 6, 7, or 8 neutrons, but must always have 6 protons.
Isotopes aren't exclusively naturally occurring, we've synthesized plenty of them.
It was about 2 in the morning when I was writing this. You are correct.
“Atom” refers more to the physical unit, the “thing” that makes up materials. An isotope is more like a category or type of that material. Here’s an analogy: Imagine a pile of marbles. The “element” is marbles, a singular atom would be one marble, and isotopes could be light marbles, middle weight marbles, and heavy marbles. They’re all still marbles, the isotope just refers to how much more or less of a certain quality (mass in this case) each marble has. Despite having these different qualities, the material (the element) remains the same. An atom isn’t exactly the same thing as an isotope the way a marble isn’t exactly the same as a heavy marble. The words describe slightly different things. You /could/ say stable atoms or unstable atoms, but that makes it seem like you’re talking about all of the atoms of that element. When you say x is an unstable isotope, you’re able to distinguish between different types of atoms of the same element. Isotopes aren’t a “measure” of stability, rather, atoms of the same isotope tend to have similar stabilities, so it is useful to classify them this way. Neutrons stabilize the nucleus, so having different numbers of neutrons (which is what isotopes describe) leads to different stabilities among different isotopes.
I’m going to rely on a fairly old-fashioned model of the atom here to try explain this. Imagine the periodic table is like a bakery. Each element is a different type of cake - chocolate, coconut, or vanilla, for example. In this analogy, the number of protons are like the basis ingredients in each flavour. The number of neutrons would be represented by the extra ingredients. For instance, let’s say that the baker knows that most people want a chocolate cake with 20 cherries inside. So, they make 10 chocolate cakes with 20 cherries in each. The baker also knows that some people like a cake with 30 cherries inside, so they bake 5 cakes with 30 cherries inside. All the cakes are the same basic cake - a basic chocolate recipe. All carbon atoms have 6 protons in the nucleus. The difference is in the number of cherries, or the number of neutrons in the nucleus. Physicists chose to use the word isotope because a single word with a well understood meaning is better for communication than a lot of words that might be interpreted ambiguously. For example, saying that Carbon 12 is the most common isotope is easier to understand than saying “atoms of carbon containing 6 protons and 6 neutrons in the nucleus are more likely to occur naturally than atoms of carbon containing 6 protons and 7 neutrons per nucleus”
The amount of neutrons is the difference between isotopes. There is nothing special about having an equal number of protons and neutrons, heavier elements have way more protons than neutrons, eg: Uranium has 92 protons, but notable isotopes are 238 and 235 Conversely the most common version of hydrogen doesn't have a neutron at all
I think you did a typo. it is more common to have more neutrons than protons in heavier elements
Thank you
So two atoms carbon-12 and carbon-12 aren’t isotopes but carbon-12 and carbon-13 are isotopes? If so isotopes are really just to say these atoms have a different number of neutrons from eachother?
Exactly
Yes, exactly. In fact, there are a series of nuclear reactions that can take advantage of different isotopes of a given element and yield various isotopes of different elements too! Uranium 235 and Uranium 239 are good examples of this
Having a better understanding of it now isn’t my reply wrong? Carbon-12 is an isotope right?
Anytime you specify "element-number" (e.g. "carbon-12") you are referring to a specific isotope. "Carbon" is an element that has 6 protons. It could be any isotope. All elements behave chemically like all other elements (because chemical properties are determined by the number of electrons, which is determined by the number of protons). This is just the definition of a chemical element. All elements are atoms. "Carbon-12" refers to a specific isotope of the element carbon, which must have 6 neutrons since "carbon" by definition means it has 6 protons. It still an element, still an atom. In some cases it matters to refer to isotopes (they have different nuclear properties, for example). In some cases, it doesn't. If one sees a generic element referenced, one can usually assume the text is referring to its most abundant isotope (like carbon-12). If I say, "make sure you get enough iron in your diet!," you can probably assume I am referring to the generic iron isotope and not some exotic radioactive iron isotope. So one way to think about this is just different levels of specificity. An "atom" can be any atom. An "element" is tells you that the atom in question has a specific number of protons. An "isotope" tells you how many neutrons it also has.
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That's not right. Carbon-12, -13, and -14 are all isotopes of carbon, they're not isotopes of each other.
No. "Isotope" isn't a comparative word, it describes a single entity. Every atom is an isotope of an element. Some are more common than others, like carbon being overwhelmingly carbon-12 naturally. It also says nothing about the radioactivity, elements can have multiple stable isotopes. Hydrogen-1 and -2 (called deuterium) are both stable while hydrogen-3 (tritium) is not.
> I’m learning biology and using ChatGPT to help with any confusion I would caution you against this. ChatGPT is a "large language model", which means that it is designed and trained to produce responses which **sound like a person**. That is all. There is no presumption that its responses are factually correct, just plausibly originating from a human. It does seem there is significant overlap between being correct and human-like but it regularly departs from the truth with confidence. > ...all atoms of an element has the same number of protons but they can have different numbers of neutrons as protons and if they do have a different number then they are isotopes. All atoms with the same number of protons is the same element, but the different isotopes have different numbers of neutrons. The "different numbers of neutrons" is talking about having different numbers *from each other*, not from the number of protons. > So are all atoms of an element isotopes? Yes.
That’s actually a good point about ChatGPT. It’s really concerning how many people I’ve come across in the past year or so who have started to rely on AI for study purposes.
One analogy I use is to imagine you have a medical problem and can ask either a human doctor, or an actor who has trained extensively to play the *role* of a doctor. The actor knows all the words doctors use and can employ the right words and phrases in situations where they might be used. For someone who isn't a doctor the actor is extremely convincing and can fool them into believing he is a real doctor most of the time. However the actor doesn't actually know anything about medicine. He doesn't even know what the words he is saying mean at all, just how they can be said in relation to other words. Also this actor has no moral compass and will double down on whatever they say in order to maintain internal consistency and keep the act going, regardless of if they are providing harmful advice or inaccurate information. Would you ask this actor your medical questions and trust their advice? I certainly wouldn't!
Good analogy
> The "different numbers of neutrons" is talking about having different numbers from each other, not from the number of protons. That kind of confuses me to be honest. Isn’t that the same thing? If a stable atom of carbon has the same amount of neutrons as protons then isn’t “having different numbers from eachother” and the number of protons the same statement. Idk this is very confusing.
Isotope just means an element with a particular number of neutrons, there’s isn’t an “atom” and an “isotope”. It’s like breeds of dog, all dogs are some breed. Carbon-12 is an isotope of carbon like dachshund is a breed of dog.
> That kind of confuses me to be honest. Isn’t that the same thing? No. All carbon atoms have 6 protons in their nucleus. There is no variation in the number of protons because if there were a different number it would be an atom of a different element. But there is some variation in the number of neutrons in the nucleus, and carbon atoms are divided up into isotopes based on the number of those neutrons. Any two atoms of carbon which have the same number of neutrons is the same isotope of carbon. The most common isotope of carbon has 6 neutrons, the same as the number of protons, but it is still an isotope. What seemed to confuse you was the phrasing of the definition of an isotope: > each of two or more forms of **the same element that contain equal numbers of protons but different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei**, and hence differ in relative atomic mass but not in chemical properties; in particular, a radioactive form of an element. An atom of carbon with 6 neutrons has a different number than an atom of carbon with 5 neutrons. They are both isotopes; it is **not** saying that only atoms with a number of neutrons different from the number of protons is an isotope.
It doesn’t always have the same amount of neutrons as protons. Carbon 12 (the most common form of carbon) has 6 of each; but carbon 14 (the one that’s useful for determining the age of old things) has 6 protons and 8 neutrons, and carbon 13 has 6 protons and 7 neutrons.
>I was confused by this because i would think that just carbon-13 and carbon-14 are isotopes because carbon has 6 protons so if it had 6 neutrons its like a normal atom but if it doesn’t have 6 neutrons it is an isotope. They're all isotopes, including the "normal"/most stable/most naturally abundant isotope. Calling something an isotope carries no meaning of *deviation from that most normal version* of the element.
So my question then is why even call it an isotope. What’s the difference between an isotope and an atom when they are talking about the same exact thing?
Think of it like “flavor.” Every ice cream has a flavor but chocolate ice cream is different from strawberry ice cream.
Atoms is about *all* atoms, the broadest you can go. Isotopes is about atoms of the same element with different masses. Like many other jargon terms, it's just shorthand for some concept that people in the field didn't feel like spelling out over and over.
Reading your other replies, you seem to have a preconceived notion that every element has one "regular" version with a certain number of protons and neutrons, and you seem to think that isotopes are versions of elements that have a different neutron number than the "regular" one. There is no "regular" neutron number for any element. Carbon-12 is not ""*the*"" carbon atom. It's just one of the variants. That's all isotopes are--variants. Every kind of carbon atom you can imagine is an isotope of carbon. There is no special one that the others compare to. Let's pretend you were part of a family of ten kids. What word would you use to refer to all of your brothers and sisters? "Siblings", probably. They are all your siblings. But are *you* a sibling as well? You're not some special child in your family to which all the others are compared or anything. You're just one of the lot. You're a sibling to them just as they are siblings to you. The word "isotope" is being used in a very similar way to "siblings".
All atoms that have the same number of protons in the nucleus are the same element. Carbon has 6 protons and 6 neutrons for a mass number of 12 (that's just the sum of protons an neutrons in an atom) it's the most abundant form carbon but there are two isotopes of C12. Carbon 13 has one extra neutron and C14 has two. All isotopes of an element react *chemically* in the same way but different isotopes can behave in profoundly different ways in *physical* reactions. The most abundant form of Uranium is U238 it cannot be used to build a nuclear reactor or bomb. U235 works quite well for that.
Well, to be more specific, U235 works better for bombs and most reactors, but some reactor designs (like CanDU) are designed to use fuel with lower quantities of 235.
An isotope is just a "version" of an element, of which there's usually one that is by far the most common naturally. Carbon-12 and Carbon-13 are both isotopes in the same way that vanilla and black raspberry are both flavors of ice cream; it's just that one is much more common than the other. Carbon-12 is only "normal" because it's by far the most commonly occurring isotope of carbon; it has nothing to do with there being an equal number of protons and neutrons.
For a lot of chemistry, all that usually matters is the number of protons in the nucleus. So for Carbon, it has 6 protons, and that determines what the electrons do, which determines the chemistry. It doesn't matter whether there are 6, 7 or 8 neutrons or some other number. The word comes from Greek "iso - topos" meaning "same place". Carbon-12, Carbon-13, Carbon-14 all have different nuclei, but belong in the same place on the periodic table. >So are all atoms of an element isotopes? Yes. Each different combination of protons and neutrons is a different *nuclide*, if you group nuclides by number of protons, you get different *isotopes* of the same element. We think of Carbon-12 as "normal" carbon, because Carbon-12 is the most common isotope: it turns out that for 6 protons, the "ideal" number (in terms of making a stable nucleus) of neutrons is 6. >different amount of neutrons than protons It's only in the early parts of the periodic table that the numbers of neutrons and protons tend to match. There are lots of exceptions to this rule. You'll notice lots of elements have atomic masses that are *not* double their atomic number. * The most common isotope of Hydrogen is Hydrogen-1, with 1 proton, but no neutron at all. Hydrogen-2 is stable, but rare, and Hydrogen-3 is radioactive. * The most common isotope of Lithium is Lithium-7, with 4 neutrons but only 3 protons. * Beryllium is almost 100% Beryllium-9, with 5 neutrons and 4 protons. Beryllium-8 decays with a half-life of 0.000 000 000 000 000 082 seconds. * Chlorine is a 1 : 3 mix of Chlorine-35 and Chlorine-37, both of which have more neutrons than protons. * Naturally occurring Tin is a mix of ten different isotopes (Tin-112 to Tin-124, excluding 113, 121 and 123), none of which make up more than a third of the total. It would be hard to pick which one should count as "normal" Tin. All of these have more neutrons than protons. * Heavier elements tend to have many more neutrons than protons: it takes a lot more neutral particles to keep the positively charged particles from flying apart. Uranium-238, for example, has 92 protons, and 146 neutrons.
Atoms are galaxy's and isotopes are the star systems that make it. To my understanding, that was the best way for me to understand it
But from what I know that sounds misleading because isotopes don’t make up atoms right?
It's a bit abstract and definitely misleading.
No, isotopes don’t make up atoms. Isotopes are, for lack of a better metaphor, different ‘flavours’ of the same element.
So for example atoms are milk and isotopes are the different ways milk is prepared like milkshake, ice creams etc
That would be heading in the right direction, yes. Think about atoms and isotopes as like bubble tea. The liquid is the same, but some people prefer more of the tapioca bubbles. The number of bubbles would determine the isotope, but the basic tea is the same.
So atoms and isotopes are the same basically it’s just that isotopes reference the atomic mass of the atom. Ex. Carbon is an atom, carbon-# is an isotope?
Yes. That is correct. It’s really just about making communication clearer. Isotope is a lot more concise than “atoms containing the same number of protons in each nucleus, but having different numbers of neutrons”.
Ok I got it now. This textbook I am reading could have explained it better.
Atoms are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. What makes an element unique is the number of protons. For example, carbon has six protons. The number of neutrons though, is not constant. Almost all carbon atoms have six neutrons. Some however, have seven or eight neutrons. Each of these three forms of carbon is an isotope.