Building Isotopes

CHEM1305 Introductory Chemistry

Chapter 4 Discussion

Building Isotopes

This discussion is more of an activity. Please click on the following link (Links to an external site.) to visit the Isotopes and Atomic Mass simulator.

Click on the simulator, and choose the ‘Isotopes’ option

Once there, choose one of the elements seen in the top right corner (only the first 10 elements are available)

Expand the ‘Abundance in Nature’ box on the right

Determine which isotopes of the element are stable by adding or taking away neutrons from the nucleus (a bucket of neutrons is to the left)

Report which isotopes are stable (using the correct isotope name) and what percent abundance of each isotope is found in nature

I have used hydrogen as an example to show how you should report your findings:

Hydrogen-1 has 99.9885% natural abundance

Hydrogen-2 has 0.0115% natural abundance

All other isotopes are NOT stable

I have included screenshots of the hydrogen example below. You DO NOT need to upload any screenshots, I have only put them here to help guide you.

H-1

H-2

H-3

If the images do not appear, see them in the .pdf file here