Environmental isotopes isotope. For example, H (tritium) is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. It decays into He with a half-life of ~12.3 years. By comparison, stable isotopes are more stable, decaying much more slowly and having much longer half-lives. Examples of stable isotopes are Sr and Sr. These isotopes of strontium have half-lives on the order of billions of years or are unmeasured because of how stable they are. On timescales that geologists and environmental scientists investigate, these isotopes are stable. Both of these types of isotopes are useful to scientists. Radioactive isotopes are generally more useful on shorter timescales, such as
Hydrogen isotope biogeochemistry this, NMR experiments involved constructing massive projects, locating large magnets, and hand wiring miles of copper coil. Proton NMR remained the most popular technique throughout advancements in following decades, but deuterium and tritium were used in other flavors of NMR spectroscopy. Deuterium has a different magnetic moment and spin than protium, but generally a much smaller signal. Historically, deuterium NMR is a poor alternative to proton NMR, but has been used to study the behavior of lipids on membranes. Recently, a variation of deuterium NMR called H-SNIF has shown potential for understating position specific isotope compositions and comprehending biosynthetic pathways.