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Tin (50 Sn) is the element with the greatest number of stable isotopes (ten; three of them are potentially radioactive but have not been observed to decay). This is probably related to the fact that 50 is a "magic number" of protons.
Hydrogen (1 H) has three naturally occurring isotopes: 1 H, 2 H, and 3 H. 1 H and 2 H are stable, while 3 H has a half-life of 12.32(2) years. [3] [nb 1] Heavier isotopes also exist; all are synthetic and have a half-life of less than 1 zeptosecond (10 −21 s). [4] [5] Of these, 5 H is the least stable, while 7 H is the most.
The separation of hydrogen and deuterium is unusual because it is based on chemical rather than physical properties, for example in the Girdler sulfide process. Uranium isotopes have been separated in bulk by gas diffusion, gas centrifugation, laser ionization separation, and (in the Manhattan Project ) by a type of production mass spectrometry .
The other six isotopes forming 82.7% of natural tin have capture cross sections of 0.3 barns or less, making them effectively transparent to neutrons. [27] Tin has 31 unstable isotopes, ranging in mass number from 99 to 139. The unstable tin isotopes have half-lives of less than a year except for tin-126, which has a half-life of
An even number of protons or neutrons is more stable (higher binding energy) because of pairing effects, so even–even nuclides are much more stable than odd–odd. One effect is that there are few stable odd–odd nuclides: in fact only five are stable, with another four having half-lives longer than a billion years.
This is the δD-δ13C diagram that is well known for categorizing and identifying methane isotopes based on carbon isotopes and hydrogen isotopes. Redrawn from Whiticar, 1999. Recent advances in analytical chemistry have enabled high-precision measurements of multiply substituted (or 'clumped') isotopologues like 13 CH 3 2 H. This is a novel ...
Of the 94 natural elements, eighty have a stable isotope and one more has an almost-stable isotope (with a half-life of 2.01×10 19 years, over a billion times the age of the universe). [15] [b] Two more, thorium and uranium, have isotopes undergoing radioactive decay with a half-life comparable to the age of the Earth.
The number of neutrons in a nucleus usually has very little effect on an element's chemical properties; except for hydrogen (for which the kinetic isotope effect is significant). Thus, all carbon isotopes have nearly identical chemical properties because they all have six electrons, even though they may have 6 to 8 neutrons.