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Natural iron (26 Fe) consists of four stable isotopes: 5.845% 54 Fe (possibly radioactive with half-life > 4.4 × 10 20 years), [4] 91.754% 56 Fe, 2.119% 57 Fe and 0.286% 58 Fe. There are 28 known radioisotopes and 8 nuclear isomers, the most stable of which are 60 Fe (half-life 2.6 million years) and 55 Fe (half-life 2.7 years).
For very small atomic mass number (H, He, Li), binding energy per nucleon is small, and this energy increases rapidly with atomic mass number. Nickel-62 (28 protons, 34 neutrons) has the highest mean binding energy of all nuclides, while iron-58 (26 protons, 32 neutrons) and iron-56 (26 protons, 30 neutrons) are a close second and third. [13]
The rarer isotopes nickel-62 and iron-58, which both have higher binding energies, are not shown. Iron-56 (56 Fe) is the most common isotope of iron. About 91.754% of all iron is iron-56. Of all nuclides, iron-56 has the lowest mass per nucleon. With 8.8 MeV binding energy per nucleon, iron-56 is one of the most tightly bound nuclei. [1]
The darker more stable isotope region departs from the line of protons (Z) = neutrons (N), as the element number Z becomes larger. This is a list of chemical elements by the stability of their isotopes. Of the first 82 elements in the periodic table, 80 have isotopes considered to be stable. [1] Overall, there are 251 known stable isotopes in ...
The only stable nuclides having an odd number of protons and an odd number of neutrons are hydrogen-2, lithium-6, boron-10, nitrogen-14 and (observationally) tantalum-180m. This is because the mass–energy of such atoms is usually higher than that of their neighbors on the same isobaric chain, so most of them are unstable to beta decay .
To reduce the disruptive energy, the weak interaction allows the number of neutrons to exceed that of protons—for instance, the main isotope of iron has 26 protons and 30 neutrons. Isotopes also exist where the number of neutrons differs from the most stable number for that number of nucleons.
protons and neutrons have different masses, [7] [8] and different nuclides have different ratios of protons and neutrons. atomic masses are reduced, to different extents, by their binding energies. The ratio of atomic mass to mass number (number of nucleons) varies from 0.998 838 1346 (51) for 56 Fe to 1.007 825 031 898 (14) for 1 H.
The chemical elements are distinguished from each other by the number of protons that are in their atoms. For example, any atom that contains 11 protons is sodium, and any atom that contains 29 protons is copper. Atoms with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons are called isotopes of the same element.