Eli5: what are things like carbon-12? Are they carbons but with a nucleon mass of 12? And how are electrons related?
In: Chemistry
I think you are talking about isotopes.
Have a look at a periodic table. There are 2 numbers for every element. The smaller number is the atomic number, that’s the number of protons. This is what defines an element. Crbon always has 6 protons, if it had 7 it would be nitrogen.
The bigger number is the mass number, which is the number of protons and neutrons. Protons and neutrons have a similar mass(1 atomic mass unit), so this is also the mass of the atom. Electrons are ignored since they are significantly lighter and tend to get attracted to other atoms.
Carbon-12 has a mass number of 12. Since it’s carbon it has 6 protons, so it must have 6 neutrons. Carbon-13 has 6 protons and 7 neurons. Carbon-14 has 6 protons and 8 neutrons, but since it has so many neutrons it’s unstable and undergoes radioactive decay. Radioactive decay is where isotopes are most useful, since carbon-14 is radioactive but carbon-12 isn’t.
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