Question

How would you compare and contrast atoms, ions, and isotopes?

Answer 1

Hint Atoms, ions, and isotopes all the three contain elements from the periodic table. But the difference among them is that they contain different numbers of electrons, protons and neutrons in their elements.

Complete step by step answer:
- In the question it is asked how atoms, ions and isotopes are different from each other.
- Atom is the smallest unit of a matter and it is indivisible and consists of electrons, neutrons and protons.
- Whereas coming to the ions, in ion the number of electrons and protons are not equal with the respective atom and ions are formed by the dissociation of a bond between the atoms unequally.
- Coming to isotopes are different from atoms, isotopes have the same number of protons and different numbers of electrons.
- For example carbon is an atom containing 6 electrons and 6 protons.
- Coming to ${{H}^{+}}$ , it has one proton and zero electrons and it is different from the hydrogen atom which consists of one electron and one proton in its nucleus.
- Coming to isotopes hydrogen has three isotopes and they are hydrogen, deuterium and tritium.
- All the three isotopes have the same atomic number (Z=1) but they differ in their number if neutrons.
- Hydrogen has zero number of neutrons, deuterium has 1 neutron and tritium has 2 neutrons in their nucleus.
- Therefore ions, atoms and isotopes are not the same.

Note: Atoms and isotopes are neutral in nature. But coming to ions they are either positively charged or negatively charged. The charge on the ions is going to depend on whether they accept electrons (negative charge) or lost electrons (positive charge).