What does a metastable isotope do to return to ground state from an excited state?
Several dozen radioisotopes have been characterized. 65Zn, which has a half-life of 243.66 days, is the most long-lived radioisotope, followed by 72Zn with a half-life of 46.5 hours. Zinc has 10 nuclear isomers. 69mZn has the longest half-life, 13.76 h. The superscript m indicates a metastable isotope. The nucleus of a metastable isotope is in an excited state and will return to the ground state by emitting a photon in the form of a gamma ray. 61Zn has three excited states and 73Zn has two. The isotopes 65Zn, 71Zn, 77Zn and 78Zn each have only one excited state.