Isotope electrons in the neutral (non-ionized) atom. Each atomic number identifies a specific element, but not the isotope; an atom of a given element may have a wide range in its number of neutrons. The number of nucleons (both protons and neutrons) in the nucleus is the atom's mass number, and each isotope of a given element has a different mass number. For example, carbon-12, carbon-13 and carbon-14 are three isotopes of the element carbon with mass numbers 12, 13 and 14 respectively. The atomic number of carbon is 6, which means that every carbon atom has 6 protons, so that
Relative atomic mass definitions (as taken from the "Gold Book") are: and Here the "unified atomic mass unit" refers to of the mass of an atom of C "in its ground state". The IUPAC definition of relative atomic mass is: The definition deliberately specifies "An atomic weight…", as an element will have different relative atomic masses depending on the source. For example, boron from Turkey has a lower relative atomic mass than boron from California, because of its different isotopic composition. Nevertheless, given the cost and difficulty of isotope analysis, it is common practice to instead substitute the tabulated values of standard atomic