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The mass number is different for each isotope of a given chemical element, and the difference between the mass number and the atomic number Z gives the number of neutrons (N) in the nucleus: N = A − Z. [2] The mass number is written either after the element name or as a superscript to the left of an element's symbol.
The abundance of the chemical elements is a measure of the occurrences of the chemical elements relative to all other elements in a given environment. Abundance is measured in one of three ways: by mass fraction (in commercial contexts often called weight fraction), by mole fraction (fraction of atoms by numerical count, or sometimes fraction of molecules in gases), or by volume fraction.
Atomic mass is often measured in dalton (Da) or unified atomic mass unit (u). One dalton is equal to 1 ⁄ 12 the mass of a carbon-12 atom in its natural state. Thus, the numeric value of the atomic mass when expressed in daltons has nearly the same value as the mass number.
The relative atomic mass (a weighted average, weighted by mole-fraction abundance figures) of these isotopes is the atomic weight listed for the element in the periodic table. The abundance of an isotope varies from planet to planet, and even from place to place on the Earth, but remains relatively constant in time (on a short-term scale).
Different isotopes of a given element are distinguished by their mass number, which is written as a superscript on the left hand side of the chemical symbol (e.g., 238 U). The mass number is always an integer and has units of "nucleons". Thus, magnesium-24 (24 is the mass number) is an atom with 24 nucleons (12 protons and 12 neutrons).
In this situation it is generally uncommon to talk about half-life in the first place, but sometimes people will describe the decay in terms of its "first half-life", "second half-life", etc., where the first half-life is defined as the time required for decay from the initial value to 50%, the second half-life is from 50% to 25%, and so on.
where / is the half-life, E the total kinetic energy (of the alpha particle and the daughter nucleus), and A and B are coefficients that depend on the isotope's atomic number Z. The law works best for nuclei with even atomic number and even atomic mass.
For example, the sum of the mass of the three quarks in a nucleon is approximately 12.5 MeV/c 2, which is low compared to the mass of a nucleon (approximately 938 MeV/c 2). [ 27 ] [ 28 ] The bottom line is that most of the mass of everyday objects comes from the interaction energy of its elementary components.