Isotope …, "m" are the atomic masses of each individual isotope, and "x", …, "x" are the relative abundances of these isotopes. Several applications exist that capitalize on properties of the various isotopes of a given element. Isotope separation is a significant technological challenge, particularly with heavy elements such as uranium or plutonium. Lighter elements such as lithium, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen are commonly separated by gas diffusion of their compounds such as CO and NO. The separation of hydrogen and deuterium is unusual because it is based on chemical rather than physical properties, for example in the Girdler sulfide process.
Atomic mass unit of exactly 16 amu in physics. The divergence of these values could result in errors in computations, and was unwieldy. The chemistry amu, based on the relative atomic mass (atomic weight) of natural oxygen (including the heavy naturally-occurring isotopes O and O), was about as massive as the physics amu, based on pure isotopic O. For these and other reasons, the reference standard for both physics and chemistry was changed to carbon-12 in 1961. The choice of carbon-12 was made to minimise further divergence with prior literature. The new and current unit was referred to as the "unified atomic mass