Standard atomic weight real life substances—for example, in pharmaceuticals and scientific research. Atomic weights are specific to single sources and samples of an element, such as the atomic weight of carbon in a particular bone from a particular archeological site. Standard atomic weight generalizes such values to the "range of atomic weights" which a chemist might expect to derive from many random samples from Earth. This range is the cause of the "interval notation" in some standard atomic weight values. Out of the 118 known chemical elements, 84 are stable and have this Earth-environment based value. Typically, such a value is, for example
Isotope neutron number to atomic number varies the most between isotopes it usually has only a small effect, although it does matter in some circumstances (for hydrogen, the lightest element, the isotope effect is large enough to strongly affect biology). The term "isotopes" (originally also "isotopic elements", now sometimes "isotopic nuclides") is intended to imply comparison (like "synonyms" or "isomers"), for example: the nuclides , , are isotopes (nuclides with the same atomic number but different mass numbers), but , , are isobars (nuclides with the same mass number). However, because "isotope" is the older term, it is better known than