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The single monoisotopic exception to the odd Z rule is beryllium; its single stable, primordial isotope, beryllium-9, has 4 protons and 5 neutrons. This element is prevented from having a stable isotope with equal numbers of neutrons and protons (beryllium-8, with 4 of each) by its instability toward alpha decay, which is favored due to the ...
Since a nucleus with an odd number of protons is relatively less stable, odd-numbered elements tend to have fewer stable isotopes. Of the 26 "monoisotopic" elements that have only a single stable isotope, all but one have an odd atomic number—the single exception being beryllium. In addition, no odd-numbered element has more than two stable ...
Certain elements have no stable isotopes and are composed only of radioisotopes: specifically the elements without any stable isotopes are technetium (atomic number 43), promethium (atomic number 61), and all observed elements with atomic number greater than 82. Of the 80 elements with at least one stable isotope, 26 have only one stable isotope.
On Earth, thorium and uranium are the only elements with no stable or nearly-stable isotopes that still occur naturally in large quantities as primordial elements. [a] Thorium is estimated to be over three times as abundant as uranium in the Earth's crust, and is chiefly refined from monazite sands as a by-product of extracting rare-earth elements.
This discovery filled a gap in the periodic table, and the fact that technetium has no stable isotopes explains its natural absence on Earth (and the gap). [9] With the longest-lived isotope of technetium, 97 Tc, having a 4.21-million-year half-life, [10] no technetium remains from the formation of the Earth.
A nuclide is a species of an atom with a specific number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus, for example, carbon-13 with 6 protons and 7 neutrons. The nuclide concept (referring to individual nuclear species) emphasizes nuclear properties over chemical properties, whereas the isotope concept (grouping all atoms of each element) emphasizes chemical over nuclear.
A chemical element, often simply called an element, is a type of atom which has a specific number of protons in its atomic nucleus (i.e., a specific atomic number, or Z). [ 1 ] The definitive visualisation of all 118 elements is the periodic table of the elements , whose history along the principles of the periodic law was one of the founding ...
Atoms with equal numbers of protons but a different number of neutrons are different isotopes of the same element. For example, all hydrogen atoms admit exactly one proton, but isotopes exist with no neutrons (hydrogen-1, by far the most common form, [57] also called protium), one neutron , two neutrons and more than two neutrons.