Welcome to the Community College of the Air Force (CCAF). Our college is a federally-chartered degree-granting institution that serves the United States Air Force's enlisted total force.
Isotopes of an element have nuclei with the same number of protons (the same atomic number) but different numbers of neutrons. Therefore, isotopes have different mass numbers, which give the total number of nucleons-the number of protons plus neutrons.
Part of the Computing fundamentals glossary: An isotope is a form of a chemical element whose atomic nucleus contains a specific number of neutron s, in addition to the number of proton s that uniquely defines the element.The nuclei of most atom s contain neutrons as well as protons.or any element, one of the isotopes is more abundant in nature than any of the others, although often multiple isotopes of a single element are mixed. The isotope of an element is defined by the nucleon number, which is the sum of the number of protons and the number of neutrons in the atomic nucleus.