Question

What are the stable isotopes of carbon?

Answer 1

Hint: The chemicals which have the same atomic number but different mass numbers are called isotopes. In nature so many various chemicals exist in their isotopic forms also. The difference in the mass number of isotopes is due to the variation in the number of protons and number of neutrons.

Complete answer:
 - In the question is asked to write the stable isotopes of carbon.
- The element carbon has an atomic number of 6 and located in the p-block in IV A group.
- The number of electrons in the carbon atom is 6.
 - The isotopes which are available for carbon are carbon-12, carbon-13 and carbon-14.
- The atomic masses of carbon isotopes for carbon-12, carbon-13 and carbon-14 are 12, 13 and 14.
- But in the question they asked about the stable isotopes of carbon.
- The isotope carbon-14 is the unstable isotope of carbon and continuously is going to be regenerated in nature.
- In the Carbon-12 isotopes there are 6 protons and 6 neutrons.
- In the carbon-13 isotope there are 6 protons and 7 neutrons.
- The carbon-12 and carbon-13 are the stable isotopes because they won’t undergo any decay process to get stability.

Note:
The isotopes for chemical elements are going to form mainly due to the difference in the number of neutrons present in their nucleus. The other elements like hydrogen, fluorine, Gallium, Technetium etc. will have isotopes in nature.