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Compare an electrically neutral atom of oxygen and an isotope of oxygen. in own words

2 Answers

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Step-by-step explanation:

An isotope is defined as the specie which contains same number of protons but different number of neutrons.

For example,
^(16)_(8)O and
^(17)_(8)O are isotopes.

In a neutral oxygen atom, there are 8 protons and 8 neutrons.

As it is known that in a neutral atom the number of protons is equal to the number of electrons.

This means that in a neutral oxygen atom there are also 8 electrons.

Whereas in
^(17)_(8)O is an isotope of oxygen atom whose atomic number is 8 and atomic mass is 17.

In
^(17)_(8)O, there are 8 protons and 9 neutrons.

User Genaut
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neutral implies that the amount of electrons = amount of protons

so for oxygen, protons = 8

isotopes have equal number of protons but differ in number of neutrons , so that affect the mass since :
protons + neutrons = atomic mass

Hope this helps
User SRR
by
8.0k points