Video Transcript
The following figure shows the
nuclei of two atoms. Are the atoms of the same isotope
of an element or of different isotopes of that element?
Recall that what element an atom is
an atom of depends on how many protons are contained in the atom’s nucleus. Along with this, atoms of the same
isotope contain equal numbers of protons and neutrons. Recall also that different isotopes
of the same element contain different numbers of neutrons.
For the nuclei shown, a proton is
represented by a pink circle containing a plus symbol and a neutron is represented
by a green circle. We can see that each nucleus
contains a single proton and a single neutron. Therefore, these nuclei belong to
atoms of the same isotope of the same element.
