Question

Write an equation between the percent abundance of 121Sb and the percent abundance of 123Sb that you can use to calculate the percent abundance of each isotope. Assume that no other isotopes exist.

Answer 1

To calculate the percent abundance of 121Sb and 123Sb, you can use the equation %121Sb + %123Sb = 1. By expressing the abundance of one isotope in terms of the other, you can find the percent abundances once the abundance of one isotope is known.

Step-by-step explanation:

To calculate the percent abundance of the isotopes 121Sb and 123Sb, you can use the following equation:

%121Sb + %123Sb = 1

This equation is based on the assumption that these two isotopes are the only ones present and that their abundances must add up to 100% (or 1 when using decimal forms).

Let %121Sb be the percent abundance of Sb-121 as a decimal, and %123Sb be the percent abundance of Sb-123 as a decimal. Since the total must be 100%, or 1 in decimal form, you can express one isotope's abundance in terms of the other isotope's abundance:

%121Sb = 1 - %123Sb

Alternatively, you could express the other way around:

%123Sb = 1 - %121Sb

Once the percent abundance of one isotope is known, you can easily find the percent abundance of the other.