Talk:Isotope/Archive 1

Archive 1

wierd link

This radioisotopic labeling link under "Use of Chemical Properites" links to a useless redirect page. Could someone who knows how change this? Thanks N i g h t F a l c o n 9 0 9 0 9 ^{T a l k} 23:28, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

old postings

Maveric149 is planning on doing a massive enhancement to Wikipedia, putting in data for all 109 or so of the chemical elements, and I can hardly let him have all the fun, so I've started tinkering around with a related project. Over on http://www2.bnl.gov/CoN/nuchart1.html are charts of all the known isotopes of every element. I've decided to add them into Wikipedia. I'm putting the first one below as a "working" copy, where I'll experiment until it's right. What does everyone think of it? It took me about half an hour to do, but I wouldn't want to do more than two or three of these in a day otherwise the boredom will become terminal. :) Bryan Derksen

Oh, one question for those who might know: on the original tables over at bnl, what is the significance of the half-colored isotopes? It will be tricky to duplicate the half-coloring in HTML, bu if I know what it means I might be able to come up with some other method of indicating it. Other suggestions for improving the layout of the table are also welcome.

Wow! The table looks great! This only took you a half an hour? As far as I can tell it looks accurate. However, I am concerned that the table may be too big for low res screens - perhaps have the isotope number as a -1 font to save some space: ²⁵Si vs. ²⁵Si. Which isn't that much different for just this example, but multiplied by 12-20 times it would. I also think that the slightly smaller font looks better too (more like a superscript in a modern wordprocessor). Your color scheme seems to be very logical and a great improvement over the one on the BNL.gov site (I might have some suggestions later, but so far I can't think of any). I'm at work right now, but I'll pore over the table more this weekend to give you more input. Oh, and when the time comes, you are more than welcome to help me populate the new tables and headings with info in the elements articles - I wouldn't want to have all the fun just for myself. ;) --maveric149

I normally have an aversion to the <font> tag, but in this case screen space is at a premium so I'll give it a shot. :) As for the color scheme, my main concern is that the blue and indigo colors will blend into the color of linked text; see the deuterium and tritium links for example. When I get home I'm thinking of lightening the shades of all the colors, like was done with the background colors on the periodic table. I was originally going to be really geeky and reverse the spectrum of colors from the current version; longer wavelength of color would indicate longer half-life. But I think a purple-blue diagonal stripe is better looking than a bright red one, and "red/yellow/orange" = "highly radioactive" is a good way to go as well.

It only took half an hour thanks to Mozilla's HTML composer. Very good for roughing out initial table layout, though it needed a lot of editing to make the final code look nice. :) Bryan Derksen

I think the fields with two different colors indicate that the isotope can do two different decays, with different half-lifes. One could use a "subtable" (if the script is up to it;), or a small PNG as background (does that work?). As the other tables will go more to the upper right, leading table cells should probably be done with <td colspan=x>. --Magnus Manske

Oy, this little detail will be tricky. Why did nuclear physics have to be so complicated? :) I'll think about this some more and see what I can come up with, perhaps there will be some simple CSS trick I can use or something. As for the table's cell structure, colspan is a good idea, but on the other hand leaving all of the individual cells in there will make it easier to edit in the future. I still haven't decided on whether I should make the axes more "regular," for example, instead of scattering headers diagonally throughout like the original table did. I'll try both when I get home and have a better text editor than Wordpad available. Bryan Derksen

I thougth the scattering of the headers was quite odd at first. However, the way it is now makes it much easier to match up a particular row to an atomic number, or a column to a weight. I'd say keep the scattering. -- user:ansible

²⁶Al is both >10,000 years and unstable in the original table at BNL. Here's one attempt to convey this in HTML; colored borders. What do you think? Bryan Derksen

I was originally going to be really geeky and reverse the spectrum of colors from the current version; longer wavelength of color would indicate longer half-life.

Whoa! That's cool! I think you were on to something with that thought - Think about it: the most unstable stuff is the "hottest", right? As it is that stuff is white - and what is hotter than white hot? From there you go to progressively cooler colors for all the radioactive isotopes; violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and then red (all paler than they are now). Then for the stable stuff, maybee have something like light gray. That way the colors are totally logical and easy to follow. The emphesis of color here should lean toward logic and be explanatory - this is a more geeky subject than the regular periodic table. Just my 2 cents. --maveric149

Alright, I'll reverse the spectrum when I put in the lighter versions of the colors. I'm thinking that I'll put that off until after I've finished all of the tables, however; I've been using Mozilla composer default colors, and it's really easy to just control-click a whole bunch of cells and select the color for them. It will be easy to do a global search-and-replace later. I'm already about 30% done the tables, so I'll just finish them all off in the next few days and then recolor. Bryan Derksen

Oh, for some reason the table below doesn't display well in Konqueror 2.2.1 - some of the superscripts are on top of the symbols, and then some are just superscripts (see example here). Looks just fine in Mozilla, IE, Galeon, and Navigator 4.7 though. So it is probably just an issue with KHTML - which should be fixed with the release of KDE 3.0 in a couple of months (hopefully fixing this, and giving konqi the ability to display -1 fonts -- every other non-text based browser I know of can). This might even be fixed in the 2.2.2 version - which I have been too lazy to compile. Anyway, just a heads up in case anybody complains. --maveric149

I note that virtually every two-letter element has the superscript "on top" and all of the single-letter ones are fine; the only exception is ⁴³Ti, which is quite thin and located in a column with a wide header. I think this is simply Konqueror's way of "squashing" the cells more. Bryan Derksen

Now, one other matter for discussion: where the heck am I going to put these things? One table per article, all in one big lump, or what? :) Bryan Derksen

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I think there's no way to compress the tables as presented so that they'll be narrow enough to fit onto most browsers; some of the later elements have 20 or 30 isotopes listed each, so those tables are guaranteed to be at least that wide. So how about flipping the whole thing around, so that going from right to left increases proton number and going up increases neutron number? That way, each element gets its own column, and the table is only arbitrarily tall rather than arbitrarily wide. It won't be as easy to add new isotopes to it this way, but such is life. What does everyone think? I've put a transposed version of the second table below. Bryan Derksen

Very efficient use of space! You might still want to check out the uber page at bnl which shows the structure of all known isotopes for all the elements. It is here. Other examples, http://atom.kaeri.re.kr/, http://t2.lanl.gov/data/map.html. However, this chemlab table is a good example of what an entire HTML table would look like stitched together. This table is really huge and shows every single isotope for each element. Although it's orientation is the opposite of bnl/yours...

The chemlab table is organized so that it starts at atomic number 1 (hydrogen) in the upper-left hand corner and then trends diagonally down toward the lower-right hand corner of the screen. The chemlab table starts at the lowest atomic number then as it trends down it is displaying increasingly large atomic numbers and nucleotide numbers. At first, just the opposite made sense to me: Atomic number 1 should be in the lower left, and atomic number 111 should be on the upper right (as it is with the bnl table and with your new format.

Unfortunately, if you look at the regular form of the periodic table you will see that it too starts with low atomic mass/numbers at the top-left and increasing atomic mass/numbers as you go down and across the table. In addition, when was the last time you clicked onto a webpage and ended up at the bottom of the page and had to read up? English just doesn't work this way. So, if you are really crazy, you might want to play with this. The end result (if stitched together) would trend in the same way as the chemlab table but have your clever column/rows switch.

But this still leaves us with the spacing issue.... Which I am glad to say has been solved by your novel solution of reversing the columns with the rows (which I hope wasn't difficult). It is kinda similar in concept to the Beryllium table -- you can add arbitrarily large amounts of info since the table grows in height, not width. This is a really good thing for scalability: For example, looking at the chemlab HTML table, I see that Xenon has has about about 40 isotopes. This would be totally impossible to show as a single row displayable on anything but the largest monitors with the highest resolution without a horizontal scroll (on my home 14inch monitor with 1024x768 resolution, only about 20 of isotopes could be displayed at once). On the other hand, not all 40 would be displayable vertically either. This, of course, isn't as big of an issue since a web page naturally flows up and down in the vertical and this is the way English speakers read.

Another thing I like about your row/column switch, is that it now will be possible to have a single column in an isotope article aligned right with all the isotopes for that element in the column. Under your current example of the column/row switch, the largest number will be displayed at the top/first part of the page. However, if flip the example 180 degrees off the screen, then the opposite will be true: the isotopes will be listed with the lowest numbered one first and will trend down to the highest numbered ones (just as it now is with the isotopic part of the Beryllium properties table). I also think that having the bold symbols of each element on top will serve as a "backbone" that will help to visually organize the table (this is something that should be done regardless of your choice of going with the BNL or the chemlab trend). Hope this helps! --maveric149

Wow, lots of comments there. Basically, if I have this right, you're saing that the elements should be arranged with proton number increasing from left to right, and neutron number increasing from top to bottom? Yes, that makes good sense, and will actually save me some extra work when I do the table-reversal thing (I downloaded a new piece of software to do it with, Namo WebEditor 5 trial version, and even so there's a fair amount of dragging rows and columns into new positions manually). I've been continuing to create the tables initially in the same orientation as the bnl tables, since it makes error-checking them and coloring them so much easier. I'm up to Technetium now. :)

Once these tables are finished, I think it would be reasonable to paste them together into standardized browser-window-width chunks as well as one monster-huge table for a separate article (like the huge alternate periodic table). The browser-window-sized chunks could go at the bottom of the main Isotopes article without much problem; scrolling up and down is quick and easy. Bryan Derksen

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Per your edit comment question: Yes I think width is starting to become an issue again. It's those damn elements with more than 100 nucleons that are causing it. Perhaps have 10 or 15 columns instead of 20... BTW would it be possible to set the width of the first few sub-tables (which naturally take up less real estate due to lower nucleon counts and one letter symbols) to match that of the heavy weights that have triple digit nucleon counts and three-letter symbols? That way, everything would line up nicely and would be easier to follow. --maveric149

I'll switch to 15 each. The current table for elements 41-60 is about as large as a 20-element table is likely to get (all columns now have triple digit nucleon numbers and most of the elements have double-letter symbols), and on my monitor it looks like shaving 5 elements off of the end will make it fit just right. I'll be able to get the thinner tables to match up by setting every table's width="100%", which should stretch them out to fill the available area. I'll see if I can make the columns equal width, too. Bryan Derksen

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Alright, here finally are the 15-column tables. I haven't done the colspan stuff for the empty cells, but I'm not going to until I know these fit right this time. :) Bryan Derksen

working area

Since 90% of this talk page consisted of table code that's now obselete, I've deleted that stuff. See the completed tables linked to from Isotope for future discussion.

Carbon-14 decaying into carbon-13?

"For example, the isotope Carbon-14 may, via radioactive decay, become Carbon-13, but both are Carbon isotopes."

I thought carbon-14 (6 protons, 8 neutrons) decays into nitrogen-14 (7 protons, 7 neutrons) via beta decay. There are many types of radioactive decay--the most common, alpha, beta, and gamma, cannot change only the isotope. In order for carbon-14 to become carbon-13, only one neutron must be lost.

Removed that sentence. Femto 18:45, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I LOVE ISOTOPES

boxes

Can somebody direct me to a written explanation of this type of tables/boxes? In particular, which is the meaning of each box and how does one construct them?

Jclerman 21:09, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I know of no more detailed instructions than the short mention at Wikipedia:WikiProject Isotopes, which at least should be a place to start. Femto 11:54, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

That link doesn't tell me from where to get the data to insert in the boxes. Moreover, why do stable isotopes have such a box with a "decay chain" link which is not related at all? And the un-initiated reader has no clue or way to find out how to find out where to glean some info when they encounter such template at the bottom of an article without a reference to its meaning. Jclerman 12:08, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Why isotope?

IUPAC and IUPAP many years ago had decided to use the term nuclide, and the term Isotopes only in plural form. --82.200.32.1 12:49, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Confusing

Isotopes are forms of an element that have a different number of neutrons than other varieties of the element. While isotopes

This definition I find considerably more confusing than other common ones on the web, such as:

An atom having the same number of protons in its nucleus as other varieties of the element but has a different number of neutrons.

-www.nuenergy.org

here are more. If you know what an isotope is, you just gloss over that definition, but it's not very well-worded.

Ken 16:30, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Isotope is a sub category, of which nuclide is a individual member. You're making a table of nuclides. The set of nuclides with the same atomic number Z but different masses A are called "isotopes." Naturally a group of isotopes, having the same Z, are also the same chemical element-- but saying so is redundant. The set of nuclides with the same atomic mass A (but different atomic number Z), are called "isobars." Steve 16:50, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

From M-W:

Main Entry: iso•tope Etymology: is- + Greek topos place

• 1 : any of two or more species of atoms of a chemical element with the same atomic number and nearly identical chemical behavior but with differing atomic mass or mass number and different physical properties
• 2 : NUCLIDE

Etymology: nucleus + Greek eidos form, species

a species of atom characterized by the constitution of its nucleus and hence by the number of protons, the number of neutrons, and the energy content

--Jclerman 17:03, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Just to make it more confusing, it has been decided to refer to differing energy content states of the same nuclide, such as Tc-99 and Tc-99m, as nuclear isomers. Steve 17:22, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Merge?

Should this be merged with Margaret Todd (doctor)? S h a r k f a c e 2 1 7 01:56, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Abuse spotting

How do you report abuse here on wikipedia??? This page was completely vandalized a couple of minutes ago by someone and I wanted to report the abuse but I did not know where to go. Anyways, someone has fixed the page now, so it is alright again. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sababa369 (talk • contribs).

See Wikipedia:Vandalism on how to deal with it. Usually it's simply reverted, persistent vandals are reported to WP:AIV. Femto 12:08, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Misleading statement

I cannot make anything out of the last statement of the first paragraph. It reads "An Isotope only occurs when the sum of the neutrons and protons are equal to that of the mass number.".

First, I believe "equal to that of the mass number" should be changed to "equal to the mass number" to have the statement start making some sense. Also, change "the sum of ... are equal" to "the sum of ... is equal".

Second, in the context of a previous statement, which links the mass number to the sum of the protons and neutrons, does this not really mean that an isotope always occurs, because the sum of neutrons and protons is always equal to the mass number? (Hence making the statement a truism)

If my deduction was right, please remove this statement. Viridium 00:18, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

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I removed the statement myself, it was very disturbing. Viridium 00:20, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

article assessment

What specific changes are necessary to move this article from start-class to GA-class? 69.140.152.55 (talk) 04:30, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Major name-switch proposal: isotope (mostly) trading with nuclide

Following the example of stable nuclide, I think it's time to modernize both the the isotope and nuclide articles, by putting most of the modern material (including the chart of nuclides) into the nuclide article, which will be the larger one. We can leave a little history in both places, with the full history of the "isotope" name remaining in the isotope article. But the modern term for nuclear species is "nuclide" and isotope is now a subset word which is more specific and refers properly to just the set of nuclides of a given element. So, as the more limited term, it should be the shorter article. Are there any objections if I (mostly) switch this material around? I'm going to leave a similar tag at the isotope article and perhaps at some chem-related wikiproject TALK pages, as well. SBHarris 02:17, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

As long as we leave an isotope article with information for the reader who has seen the term in the newspaper or TV and just wants a basic understanding of its meaning, usually including the difference between radioactive and stable isotopes. Also there should be an explicit statement that much more detailed information is in the nuclide article. Dirac66 (talk) 03:12, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Of course. SBHarris 03:25, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm wary of leaving too little information at the article that most people not up on the most recent terminology will visit.

It is also worth considering merging the two articles. --JWB (talk) 16:06, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

If we merge them that will fix the "visiting wrong page" article, as we'd have isotope redirect to nuclide. Seems a shame, but without massive header-pointing in both articles, it may be unavoidable. SBHarris 00:43, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

A merged article could have a combined name, perhaps Nuclide (Isotope), with redirects from both Isotope and Nuclide. I think this is justified because the usual (or historical) use of Isotope really means Nuclide. Of course an early section would be Nomenclature to set things straight, in both historical and current context. Dirac66 (talk) 01:24, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

An even better suggestion. Nuclide (isotope) is not something I considered, since they are not now synonyms. However, as you point out, they once were, so it works. Most Wikis with parentheses, however, use them to classify terms, like Queen (band). What we really want is "Nuclide or Isotope" or something. "Nuclide and Isotope"? SBHarris 02:33, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, I agree that parentheses in the title are contrary to Wiki convention. I think and is best as it makes clear that they are two distinct though related concepts. Or suggests two names for the same concept, which we want to make clear is incorrect so it shouldn't be in the title.

However I would place Isotope before Nuclide as it is both the older word and still more common in non-technical literature such as newspapers. So my suggestion is now "Isotope and Nuclide". Dirac66 (talk) 04:52, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

There's nothing "non-technical" about the word "isotope": it has a clear, precise meaning, even if it is occasionally wrongly used. You simply cannot say that "nuclide" is always more correct simply because it is the broader term: a "kinetic nuclide effect" would be an utter barbarism! So I don't see why we should merge the articles at all. If we do, just call the merged article "nuclide", instead of inventing some silly combined term, and add {{redirect|Isotope}} at the top. Physchim62 (talk) 09:19, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that the clear precise meaning is relatively new and most news media have not caught on yet. The word used to have two meanings, which IUPAC and IUPAP have separated into "nuclide" and "isotope". Most textbooks and many scientists now conform, but most news sources still use "isotope" to mean "nuclide". For example this 2009 article whose last section mentions 5 examples of "isotopes" - of 4 different elements!!

I think the uninformed reader who looks up "isotope" needs to find both the current precise meaning AND a clear explanation that the media's "isotope" is now known as "nuclide". This is done fairly well in the current introduction ("Since isotope is the older term ...)

Becuase of the nomenclature confusion, some information needs to be in both articles. Merging would assure that everything is in one place, but perhaps the merged article would be too long and add to the confusion. So perhaps we should return to SBHarris' original proposal and move some content from Isotope to Nuclide. I suggest specifically that everything relating to nuclear stability should be moved to Nuclide. Dirac66 (talk) 21:54, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I think discussing at the relevant WikiProjects would be a good idea before proceeding. --JWB (talk) 17:22, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Where exactly do you mean? At Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry? I searched about 10 minutes before finding the page which I think you are talking about. Dirac66 (talk) 20:53, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, maybe also Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics. Not sure if there is a project on nuclear technology. --JWB (talk) 14:29, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Both those places are directed here, as well as the TALK page on nuclide. I dislike the idea of two articles for something this closely related. If there is a {{redirect|Isotope}} tag we can add to nuclide (or vice versa if you want to call the article isotope) then I'm fine with one name. Personally I prefer nuclide as isotopes are subsets of nuclides. Can I have some votes? SBHarris 05:59, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

VOTES:

1. First choice merged article with combined name such as Isotope and Nuclide. Second choice keep two articles and transfer sections from Isotope to Nuclide - Nuclear propereties and stability, Even and Odd, Use of nuclear properties. Dirac66 (talk) 14:51, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Okay, we've had 6 weeks for comment, now. Doesn't look like anybody is foaming at the mouth much about this issue. I'm therefore leaning toward Dirac66's solution of merging and putting all the info now contained in isotope and nuclide into ONE article, nuclide (which will differentiate and define nuclide and isotope in the LEDE) and give a history of isotope (and hopefully eventually, something of the history of the term "nuclide" also, if I can find any). The only redirect will be "isotope," which will redirect to "Isotope and nuclide". No "isotope" or nuclide wikis will then exist. Most articles (like stable nuclide) have been renamed to "nuclide" already, with WP for each, also containing a redirect from the same term where "nuclide" in the name, is replaced by "isotope".

Speak now if you have better ideas! SBHarris 02:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is pointless make-work, and likely to be deeply confusing to our readers. I don't agree that IUPAC and IUPAP have made some great change here. The only issue is that nuclide is a comparatively bland word, signifying just a species with a particular number of protons and neutrons; whereas isotope carries the additional notion that this can be compared with other types of the same element. So: "radionuclide", when one is talking about a number of different radioactive nuclides as a set, and describing what properties they have in common as a group; but when one is discussing the properties of particular species of particular elements, with the implication that they could be compared to other species of the same element, then isotope is still perfectly acceptable. Hence "stable isotopes", because the discussion is carrying the implication that only some forms of any particular element are stable, whereas others are not.

I therefore propose "isotope" for any discussion which touches on the idea that different forms of elements may have different properties; and "nuclide" merely for neutral statements that apply to the properties of nucleii.

We're much better to reflect standard received use, rather than trying to place ourselves at the bleeding edge. Let's not have a repeat of the "kibibit" farce. Isotope is by far the more commonly used term -- by a huge factor in ghits, so let's reflect that.

I don't believe that IUPAC have set out to ban the use of "isotope" in the singular, so that only the plural "isotopes" can be used. But even if they had, there are other examples where we have taken a conscious view, and declined to go with them in the past: Gibbs free energy being just one exception that comes to mind. Jheald (talk) 03:40, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

To underline: I don't see any reason to change the existing page nuclide which does its job well. Isotope and nuclide is an unnecessary mouthful, which doesn't naturally fit together. We do better by our readers by serving them the two existing pages separately, which seem to me well attuned to what they are likely to be looking for. Jheald (talk) 03:45, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Please don't merge articles for the sake of fashion or even scientific correctness only. For the layman, it is very convenient to be able to just look up the meaning of "isotope" and not worry about anything else. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.148.156.127 (talk) 00:17, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposal for speedy deletion of the merger article Isotope and nuclide

From the TALK page for

user:Jheald: you've had 6 weeks to voice your opinion on TALK:isotope (where all this has been debated), and now you want to speedy this page out of existence, with no consensus (not a single person has agreed with you yet). You really have no excuse for that, since you know better.

Your edit summary reads: nominating for CSD -- forking of existing articles is discouraged (loses page history). This new article reads like an /personal essay/ on terminology: UNDUE and not appropriate)

First, what you call a "new article" is merely a simple additive merge of the two existing articles isotope and nuclide. I added no new material. The reason the present LEDE is so long is that I haven't (yet) combined the two existing ones, which sit one after the other (isotope, then nuclide). What you call a "personal essay on terminology" is IN FACT the terminology from the very two WP articles that you claim stand fine by themselves, and therefore shouldn't be combined! That should tell you something.

You can't have this both ways. You think they're great when seperate, but when combined with no additions, you think it's my personal, inappropriate, undue essay on this terminology. That means you didn't read it very carefully. You're attacking exactly that which you're in the midst of defending hotly on the isotope TALK page, except you didn't recognize it when you had to read it all in the same place. UNDUE? You've got to be kidding; this is the same-old same-old that has been there in both articles, for far longer than the merger has been suggested. Where were you, all that time?

Nothing is being done ON the merger here, that I haven't attempted to gain consensus for, for six weeks, in 6 places (not only the two articles and their talk pages, but also the wikiproject pages for physics and chemistry. Where were you?

At no time have I proposed forking anything. The proposal is a merger, which is just the opposite operation. The reason merger has been proposed (and I wasn't the first to propose it) is that the two terms are near synonyms, and some of the information is redundant. Moreover, some of the information in isotope would be more appropriate in the shorter article nuclide, so quite of lot of moving will need to happen even if both names are kept.

The reason we have two articles is that the words are unfortunately not perfect synonyms, or else the problem could be fixed with a simple delete, and re-direct of one or the other, to the other one. Mononuclidic elements are not the same as monoisotopic elements, and so on. So there was a problem.

And what is the point of the number of ghits on isotype, a word for biology which has nothing to do with anything? SBHarris 04:49, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Isotope/isotype was a simple typo, which I've now corrected.

As for the rest, the point about losing page history is why we prefer to do moves, rather than copy/paste forks. If you want to work up an alternative in user space and then show it off, but usually we don't fork content on live encyclopedia pages.

As for coming late to the party, note WP:Consensus can change. So I happened not to be online the week this got posted to WP:PHYSICS, or whatever, and only saw it last night. Well, that's how it goes sometime. As far as I can see there was pretty negligible support or even interest in the change, and as for the one person who did comment, putting the two articles together wasn't his preferred option.

The candidate merged article at the moment reads like a dog's dinner -- much worse than just the two articles separately, even though the words are the same. That's because the present articles split quite neatly (and quite appropriately) between physics on the one hand, and terminology on the other. It's a good split, which makes both articles more readable. Jamming the two together makes it seem like a muddle, characteristic of material tagged {{essay-like}}, with neither aspect coming out so clearly.

Whereas all the discussion of terminology is appropriate for an article that is basically on terminology, I stand by my comment that it feels overdone and undue in an article on physics. The title is also a problem. Bracketing words together with "and" in a title works when they are the terms for the referring to discussion of the concept in abstract -- ie for words like "isotropy" rather than "isotope" -- because then what you are linking together in the title is clearly two discussions. On the other hand, "isotope" and "nuclide" are words for a member of a class. Bracketing these together with and is much less natural -- it really only works if you put in scare quotes as in the previous sentence, to make clear that you are linking them just as words. You can get round this in English by going plural: "isotopes and nuclides". But that does sound like the title of an essay, and goes against the naming policy of preferring simple titles and not plurals.

As I said further up, I don't really see that there is a problem here that needs to be fixed. "Isotope" is a perfectly reasonable word to use, if you want to shade in the nuance that the different species may be different species of the same element. It is only rarely that that is inappropriate. "Nuclide" is much more bland -- it doesn't convey this (useful) underlying element of "difference"; and it's also just a less distinctive word -- it sounds too much like too many other things. That's why I think "isotope" continues now - and will continue in future - to be much the more heavily used word, as basically refelcted in the articles as they have evolved to where they are now. Jheald (talk) 09:34, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I certainly agree that isotope is the term people tend to use when thinking of the chemistry, and nuclide is the word they use when indifferent to it. So isotope is the chemist and biologists's word, and nuclide is the nuclear physicist's word. They made it up for a reason! Government physics labs produce charts of nuclides, therefore. Chemistry people produce (combined) charts of the isotopes.

For those reading along, I have cut some text out of the lede/lead of the proposed merger article Isotope and nuclide. And this one could as well be called Isotopes and nuclides (nothing wrong with this). Of the opinions I've solicited so far, only one (Jheald's) is to do nothing. I have posted re-requests for comments on various project pages, and hopefully we can get more input on this. And would people PLEASE stop using the word "fork" inappropriately? The only place it properly has in this discussion, is to note that the articles isotope and nuclide may be a fork NOW. Whether a good or bad fork, remains to be seen. Not all forks are bad-- only those promoting a point of view are deprecated on WP. SBHarris 19:20, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Nuclide=isotope +isotone

Whoever proposed the merger has some serious problems in nuclear chemistry. Physicist don't care much about isotopes so they regularly use nuclide instead. Chemists, don't care AT ALL about isotones so they use the more specific term, isotopes. These two terms should not be mixed together especially in a merged article, because they are not synonyms. It is like having an article titled "Tyrannosauridae and T-rex" although there is allready a Tyrannosauridae and a Tyrannosaurus article; even though the latter is the best known of the entire family, what is the point in creating a combined article? 18.74.5.93 (talk) 16:36, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

In nuclear physics and chemistry each set of nuclei with given values of Z and N is one nuclide. Isotopes are sets of nuclides with a common Z, and isotones are sets of nuclides with a common Z. However as already discussed at Talk:Isotope, the media tend to use "isotope" to mean "nuclide", so many (most) readers who search for "isotope" really need "(radio)nuclide". Instead of directing them another article, it seems more helpful to explain isotope and nuclide in the same article, while carefully noting the difference between them. Dirac66 (talk) 02:29, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Besides, the set of nuclides is merely the set of all isotopes for all the elements, and before the word "nuclide" existed, the set of all the isotopes was just called "the isotopes" and now is called "the nuclides." Thus, "nuclide" is a synonym for the way the word "isotope" USED to be used. No article on either of them can fail to note this fact, and it's enough to justify a common article, if you like. If you don't, we can go back to the way it was. SBHarris 07:42, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Delete Immediately

I agree with this (I am a nuclear engineer), these pages should never be merged. @SBharris, you are completely wrong, "nuclide" is not a synonym for how "isotope" was used (even if it was, it was incorrect). This suggestion is unfounded. Please consider the fact that an isotope/isotone/isobar is defined as a set of nuclides that correspond with a specific constraint (e.g., isotones of neutron count 45 are those nuclides with a neutron count of 45). If anything, nuclide should absorb isotope; however, I believe that each is in no way synonymous. As such, these pages should not be merged. Twitchax (talk) 22:58, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Um, you cannot say that a word was incorrectly used before another word was proposed to mean something slightly different. The word nuclide was proposed by Truman P. Kohman in 1947. Doctor Kohman suggested nuclide for a "species of nucleus" defined by containing a certain number of neutrons and protons. Now, scientists had known such things existed before 1947, as the word isotope dates from 1913, and scientists realized finally the nature of isotopes in 1932-3 after the discovery of the neutron and deuterium. However, after 1933, the word "isotope" generally referred to the nucleus along with the rest of the atom, as a particular kind of atom. Kohman wanted a word for a particular kind of nucleus. [1] . In any case, when scientists wanted to talk about a particular nuclide, what do you suppose they called it? Answer, they called it a particular isotope of element so-and-so. Same thing. Before there were "radionuclides," these things (for example during WW II) were called "radioisotopes." As I read Kohman's definition, it differs in a subtle way from the present one, inasmuch as I think Kohman intended to refer to ONLY the nucleus. One of his nuclides could have many electrons or none-- it didn't matter. Previously, this would have been called an ion of a particular elemental isotope.SBHarris 02:06, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I can...

• Isotopes: Any group of atoms which contain an equal number of protons (this happens to be permutations of a specific element [U-235 and U-238]).
• Isotones: Any group of atoms which contain an equal number of neutrons (U-238 and Pu-240).
• Isobar: Any group of atoms which contain an equal number of nucleons (U-239, Np-239 and Pu-239).
• Nuclide: Any one type of atom which contains a specific number of protons, neutrons and nucleons (U-238, there is no other like it).

It does not matter how these words were used, these are the definitions currently (if I started calling Fe-56 a radionuclide, and it caught on, would that make it so?...no). Isotopes/isotones/isobars are terms used to describe a similarity between certain nuclides; however, the term nuclide refers to only one permutation of nucleons in a nucleus. As such, nuclide and isotope should not be merged into one article. A better suggestion would be to merge isotope/isotone/isobar, while carefully noting the fact that each one describes a different type of nuclide group. Twitchax (talk) 17:40, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

First, good work SBHarris on finding the origin of the word "nuclide". Kohman should be mentioned in the articles on Nuclide as well as Isotope and Nuclide. We do have an article on asteroid 4177 Kohman named for him.

Now to the point, which is that an encyclopedia for general usage must consider vocabulary used by the general public as well as by specialists. Yes, the definitions listed by Twitchak are the "correct" definitions, and do have the advantage of logical consistency. But unfortunately they are used mostly by physicists, nuclear engineers and some chemists. Much of the press and the public and even medical doctors continue to refer to nuclides as "isotopes", so how do we deal with this misconception? I have found in teaching that it is not a good idea to just ignore misconceptions (which then reappear on exam papers!); instead it is better to clearly explain the problem.

Here the lay reader looking for an explanation of the mysterious word "isotope" in his newspaper should be able to find it easily in an article with "isotope" in the title. Then s/he can be told (1) the correct meaning (as stated by Twitchak) AND (2) the popular meaning immediately followed by the explanation that this is correctly called a nuclide. This is the essential role for the article Isotope and nuclide. Some of the other sections can be left to either Isotope or Nuclide. Dirac66 (talk) 20:13, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Then why doesn't the article "Isotope and Nuclide" reflect these sentiments. It is very confusing due to the fact that the text from both articles is just smashed in there. If the point of the article is to define any misconceptions, then why doesn't the article merely do that while linking to "Nuclide" and "Isotope"? Twitchax (talk) 19:08, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Dirac66, the purpose of this entire site is education and information. It does nobody any good to use incorrect terminology (i.e. isotope rather than nuclide in this case) simply because it is a commonly misunderstood term. The correct way to go about it is have a brief explanation of what a nuclide is (as layed out by Twitchax), with the link to the isotope sub included. By reading the definitions as laid out, it is relatively easy to differentiate between isotope/isotone/isobar/nuclide. Referring to nuclides as isotopes is incorrect, and should not be encouraged by changing/merging the pages. Njmartin (talk) 19:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC)NJMartin

Again, I agree now with both Dirac66 and Njmartin. The merger page should highlight the misconceptions and differences, while the individual articles should illustrate each in depth. Twitchax (talk) 04:45, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Template problems for isotope notation

There seems to be a problem with the templates for isotope notation. The Nuclide2 and Simplenuclide2 templates lead to browser-dependent output; for some browsers the subscript is missing, or the superscript is missing, or one or both are placed in strange places. See Template talk: Nuclide2 for more details. So Sbharris "fixed" the notation to show correctly on his browser 3 days ago, and K10wnsta "fixed" it back today for his browser. It is difficult to understand why the templates do this, because the source code for the templates is pretty incomprehensible.

Anyway we need an isotope notation which shows identically on everyone's browser. The simplest suggestion would be scrap the templates and return to using <sub> and <sup>, which are simple to use and form symbols such as ¹⁴₆C on everyone's browser (I think). The 14 is not directly over the 6 as it should be, but at least everyone sees the notation the same way. Another possibility suggested by Sbharris at Template talk: Nuclide2 is to rewrite the templates using <sub> and <sup>, if someone knows how to do this (I have no idea). Other comments? Dirac66 (talk) 00:23, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Hang on, what?

The opening sentence, "Isotopes are atoms that contain the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons.", leaves the reader wondering "...contain the same number of protons _as what_?"

Were I a particle physician I'd suggest an alternative, rather than simply balking at the ambiguity, but I rely on the scientific community to fill in the blanks here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1337ingDisorder (talk • contribs) 05:56, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

It means "the same number of protons as each other." But that doesn't sound as good. When it says two atoms have the same number of protons, what's unclear about that? If we said two families have the same number of children, is that unclear? SBHarris 06:03, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Also any ambiguity is resolved by the rest of the first paragraph which gives clear examples. Dirac66 (talk) 15:05, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Fixing a few numbers

I have been fixing up the odd-even proton and neutron tables. There are 255 stable nuclides in all (see the list at stable isotope), with 33 more primordial nuclides that are radioactive. Thus, the total is 288 primordials. The tables of EE, OO, OE and EO must add up to 287, since protium can't be counted as any of them. I get 101 total odd-A stable nuclides, which means that there are 255-101 = 154 even-A nuclides. Bi-209 must be added to the list of long-lived radioactive odd-evens, and removed from the list of odd-even stables. The previous lists had only 272 primordial nuclides, but if you count up primordials it has to be 288. SBHarris 05:49, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Ta-181 and K-40 (for JWB)

To JWB: your edit today includes a note to Ref.7 reading: "Tantalum-181 has a typo and Potassium-40 is omitted". Questions: (1) could you explain what the typo is exactly for Ta-181 and what it should say? (2) You have cited this reference from a section on Odd mass number so why mention K-40? From what set is K-40 omitted? Is this supposed to be a list of ALL magnetic nuclei (it seems too short to me)? Please clarify. Dirac66 (talk) 18:51, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

The list in Citizendium isn't just for odd mass number, although it is fascinatingly close to it, for reasons discussed. Note that it includes H-2, Li-6, B-10, N-14 (all stable) plu V-50, and Lu-176 (the last two being very long-lived odd-odd radioisotopes that occur primordially). Primordial even-mass nuclei with spin aren't common, since they must be odd-odd, stable or long-lived (the p and n spins could cancel, but that seems never to happen for any odd-odd, as none are spin-0) As this article points out, there are only 9 primordial odd-odds (4 stable, 5 radioactive), all with net spin, and this Citizendium table has only five of them. I think the table intends to be a list of magnetic nuclides that are naturally-occuring (though it's not perfect as I see Am-243 and H-3 are there, which makes no sense at all). K-40 (spin-4) should indeed presumably be there, as a naturally-occuring primordial K isotope, albeit radioactive, the same as V-50 and Lu-176. The Citizendium table ALSO leaves out the primordial odd-odd Lu-138 (mentioned in this article as a radioactive odd-odd with spin, but not in Citizendium), and Ta-180m, which is odd-odd (spin 9) and of course primordial, so that's THREE primoridal magnetics that it leaves out (K-40, Ta-180m, and Lu-138). I can think of no reason why K-40, Lu-138, or Ta-180m are omitted if H-3 (tritium) is included! I cannot find a typo in the "tantalum-181" entry. This is the major nuclide of tantalum and would be included on its own, and the correct spin is given (7/2). I don't think the Citizendium table intended tantalium-181 to be tantalum-180m. Ta-180 (no m) has a half-life of only hours, and in any case, is not listed. In summary, the table in Citizendium has left out THREE primordial nuclides. SBHarris 04:17, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I got this doing a Unix command prompt search for lines with no slash:

$ grep -v / spin
Deuterium	2H or D	1	1.44 e-6
Lithium-6	6Li	1	0.000628
Boron-10	10B	3	0.00386
Nitrogen-14	14N	1	0.000998
Vanadium-50	50V	6	0.00013
Antimony-123	123.019474
Lutetium-176	176Lu	7	0.000902
Tantalum-181	181Ta	703579

It seems there is some special-character problem with the lines for Antimony-123 and Tantalum-181, that is not apparent when you just read the lines visually. I think you are correct that the table misses none of the 4 stable, low-mass odd-odds but misses 3 of the 5 primordial theoretically decaying odd-odds; I looked up their spins individually in the Isotopes of X articles. If you want to check the odd-N, half-spin numbers for errors, I'd be grateful. --JWB (talk) 04:48, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Science

So please give me answer😁 103.112.17.33 (talk) 16:40, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

What's the question? ComplexRational (talk) 18:13, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

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Semi-protected edit request on 5 February 2017

give the uses of isotope because many people wants yo know the uses of it. I am science (talk)

See Section 8.Applications of isotopes. Dirac66 (talk) 15:47, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 5 January 2016

Please change "Adding in the radioactive nuclides that have been created artificially, there are more than 3100 currently known nuclides.[4]" to "Adding in the radioactive nuclides that have been created artificially, there are more than 3339 currently known nuclides.[4]" according to the citation source Folkenstein (talk) 14:36, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

 Done - See [2]. - DVdm (talk) 14:58, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Statistics need an "as of" date

This article and a few other articles contain many statistics such as number of stable isotopes with even and odd mass, number of primordial ..., etc. etc. However these numbers seem to change often, presumably as new results are reported. So it might be a good idea to date the statistics with footnotes saying "As of November 2012" etc. Dirac66 (talk) 23:07, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Italics

Why is most of the Isotope vs. nuclide section italicized? --Akhil 0950 (talk) 04:18, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I've changed it for now. --Akhil 0950 (talk) 04:21, 21 January 2012 (UTC)