What are some common mistakes students make with isotope notation?

1 Answer
reudhreghs
Mar 5, 2017

Writing mass and atomic numbers the wrong way round.

Explanation:

Isotopes are written as #""_Z^A X#, where X is the element, Z is the atomic number and A is the atomic mass.

I was guilty of this for a long time too, I'd write the mass on the bottom because it's larger so it made more sense.

Isotopes should always be written with the big number on top.

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