Stable isotope

You don't need to be Editor-In-Chief to add or edit content to WikiDoc. You can begin to add to or edit text on this WikiDoc page by clicking on the edit button at the top of this page. Next enter or edit the information that you would like to appear here. Once you are done editing, scroll down and click the Save page button at the bottom of the page.

Please Take Over This Page and Apply to be Editor-In-Chief for this topic: There can be one or more than one Editor-In-Chief. You may also apply to be an Associate Editor-In-Chief of one of the subtopics below. Please mail us [1] to indicate your interest in serving either as an Editor-In-Chief of the entire topic or as an Associate Editor-In-Chief for a subtopic. Please be sure to attach your CV and or biographical sketch.

Stable isotopes are chemical isotopes that are not radioactive (to current knowledge). Stable isotopes of the same element have the same chemical characteristics and therefore behave almost identically. The mass differences, due to a difference in the number of neutrons, result in partial separation of the light isotopes from the heavy isotopes during chemical reactions (isotope fractionation). For example, the difference in mass between the two stable isotopes of hydrogen, ¹H (1 proton, no neutron, also known as protium) and ²H (1 proton, 1 neutron, also known as deuterium) is almost 100%. Therefore, a significant fractionation will occur.

Commonly analysed stable isotopes include oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and sulfur. These isotope systems have been under investigation for many years as they are relatively simple to measure. Recent advances in mass spectrometry (ie. multiple-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry) now enable the measurement of heavier stable isotopes, such as iron, copper, zinc, molybdenum, etc.

Stable isotopes have been used in botanical and plant biological investigations for many years, and more and more ecological and biological studies are finding stable isotopes (mostly carbon, nitrogen and oxygen) to be extremely useful. Other workers have used oxygen isotopes to reconstruct historical atmospheric temperatures, making them important tools for climate research.

Most of naturally occurring isotopes are stable; however, few tens of them are radioactive with very long half-lives. The half life of a nuclide should be comparable with the Earth's age (4.5 billions years) to be present in the natural isotopic composition of a chemical element. The lowest half life times of such isotopes are more than 700 millions years (²³⁵U). Many isotopes which are presumed to be stable (i.e. no radioactivity has been observed for them) are predicted to be radioactive with extremely long half-lives (sometimes as high as 10¹⁸ years or more). If the predicted half life falls into an experimentally accessible range, such isotopes have a chance to move from the list of stable nuclides to the radioactive category, once their activity is observed. Good examples are bismuth-209 and tungsten-180 which have been recently (2003) found to be alpha-active.

Stable isotope fractionation

There are three types of isotope fractionation:

• equilibrium fractionation
• kinetic fractionation
• mass-independent fractionation

List of stable isotopes

There are exactly 80 elements which have at least 1 stable isotope. As of September 2007, there were 244 known stable isotopes. Tin has 10 stable isotopes, more than any other element. Xenon is the only element which has 9 stable isotopes. There is no element with exactly 8 stable isotopes. Mononuclidic elements are those that have a single isotope (stable or very long-lived) in their natural abundance. Every element from hydrogen to lead has at least one stable isotope with the exceptions of technetium and promethium; elements with more than 82 protons only have radioactive isotopes, although they can still occur naturally because their half-lives are of an order of magnitude not much less than that of the time since the death of a nearby star, or because they occur in a decay chain of another radioactive isotope with such a half-life. It wasn't until 2003 that bismuth-209 was shown to be radioactive.^[1] All stable isotopes are the ground states of nuclei, excluding tantalum-180m, which is the excited level (the ground state of this nucleus is radioactive), but its decay is extremely strongly forbidden by spin-parity selection rules.

See also

• isotope table (complete)
• isotope table (divided)
• isotope geochemistry
• radionuclide

References

af:Stabiele isotoop ar:نظير مستقر ast:Isótopu estable de:Stabiles Isotopeo:Stabila izotopo ko:안정 동위 원소th:ไอโซโทปเสถียร

WikiDoc Help Menu Quick Start.. Get Started Here! How to Login How to Search Pages How to Start a New Page How to Edit a Page Cheat Sheet Editing basics Learning Basic Formatting How to make Links in WikiDoc & to External Sites How to Make Lists How to Ignoring Formatting Adding References or Footnotes to Articles Tracking Changes You Have Made How to Put an Article Into a Category When Multiple Topics Should Go To The Same Page (MI, Acute MI, AMI) Using Redirection Advanced editing How to Make Tables How to Insert Images and Other Media How to Add Video Help:How to Make Columns Web Colors How To Make Templates How to Move Pages Inserting Dynamic Dates and Times Inserting WikiDoc Statistics Editing the Table of Contents Communicating your edits Let others know what you changed: The importance of Edit Summaries Minor Edits Edit Conflicts Help Videos You Can Watch Getting Started Video

Acknowledgement and Attribution Regarding Sources of Content

Some of the initial content on this page may be incorporated in part from copyleft sources in the public domain including wikis such as Wikipedia and AskDrWiki. Drug information for patients came from the The National Library of Medicine. Infectious disease information may have come from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Differential Diagnoses are drawn from clinicians as well as an amalgamation of 3 sources: 1.The Disease Database; 2. Kahan, Scott, Smith, Ellen G. In A Page: Signs and Symptoms. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004:3; 3. Sailer, Christian, Wasner, Susanne. Differential Diagnosis Pocket. Hermosa Beach, CA: Borm Bruckmeir Publishing LLC, 2002:7 .