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 weights, which are ubiquitous in chemical laboratories and which are revised biennially by the IUPAC's Commission on Isotopic Abundances and Atomic Weights (CIAAW). Older (pre-1961) historical relative scales based on the atomic mass unit (symbol: "a.m.u." or "amu") used either the oxygen-16 relative isotopic mass or else the oxygen relative atomic mass (i.e., atomic weight) for reference. See the article on the history of the modern unified atomic mass unit for the resolution of these problems. The IUPAC commission CIAAW maintains an expectation-interval value for relative atomic mass (or atomic weight) on Earth named standard atomic weight. Standard atomic weight