Radioactive tracer such as a cell or tissue, or as a flow tracer to track fluid flow. Radioactive tracers are also used to determine the location of fractures created by hydraulic fracturing in natural gas production. Radioactive tracers form the basis of a variety of imaging systems, such as, PET scans, SPECT scans and technetium scans. Radiocarbon dating uses the naturally occurring carbon-14 isotope as an isotopic label. Isotopes of a chemical element differ only in the mass number. For example, the isotopes of hydrogen can be written as H, H and H, with the mass number at top left. When the
Hydrochloric acid highly concentrated and behavior deviates from ideality, "hydrochloric acid" (aqueous HCl) is only as acidic as the strongest proton donor available in water, the aquated proton (popularly known as "hydronium ion"). When chloride salts such as NaCl are added to aqueous HCl, they have only a minor effect on pH, indicating that Cl is a very weak conjugate base and that HCl is fully dissociated in aqueous solution. Dilute solutions of HCl have a pH close to that predicted by assuming full dissociation into hydrated H and Cl. Of the six common strong mineral acids in chemistry, hydrochloric acid is