three stable isotopes of oxygen occur naturally on earth.
three stable isotopes of oxygen occur naturally on earth.
how many isotopes of oxygen occur naturally on earth?
three stable isotopes
out of the six known chalcogens, one (oxygen) has an atomic number equal to a nuclear magic number, which means that their atomic nuclei tend to have increased stability towards radioactive decay. oxygen has three stable isotopes, and 14 unstable ones. sulfur has four stable isotopes, 20 radioactive ones, and one isomer. selenium has six observationally stable or nearly stable isotopes, 26 radioactive isotopes, and 9 isomers. tellurium has eight stable or nearly stable isotopes, 31 unstable ones, and 17 isomers. polonium has 42 isotopes, none of which are stable. it has an additional 28 isomers. in addition to the stable isotopes, some radioactive chalcogen isotopes occur in nature, either because they are decay products, such as po, because they are primordial, such as se, because of cosmic ray spallation, or via nuclear fission of uranium. livermorium isotopes 290 through 293 have been discovered. the most stable livermorium isotope is lv, which has a half-life of 0.061 seconds.
chalcogen
as discussed above, only 80 elements have any stable isotopes, and 26 of these have only one stable isotope. thus, about two-thirds of stable elements occur naturally on earth in multiple stable isotopes, with the largest number of stable isotopes for an element being ten, for tin (). there are about 94 elements found naturally on earth (up to plutonium inclusive), though some are detected only in very tiny amounts, such as plutonium-244. scientists estimate that the elements that occur naturally on earth (some only as radioisotopes) occur as 339 isotopes (nuclides) in total. only 252 of these naturally occurring nuclides are stable in the sense of never having been observed to decay as of the present time. an additional 34 primordial nuclides (to a total of 286 primordial nuclides), are radioactive with known half-lives, but have half-lives longer than 100 million years, allowing them to exist from the beginning of the solar system. see list of nuclides for details.
isotope