How to identify curium mass number?

1 Answer
Oct 18, 2017

Here's how you can do that.

Explanation:

You can identify the mass number of the most abundant isotope of curium by using the element's atomic mass.

Grab a Periodic Table and look for curium, Cm.

https://sciencenotes.org/96-curium-tile-2/https://sciencenotes.org/96-curium-tile-2/

Now, in order to find the mass number of the most abundant isotope of curium, you need to take the atomic mass, which is added at the bottom of the element cell

247.070

and round it to the nearest whole number.

You will end up with

247.070247

This means that the most abundant isotope of curium, curium-247, has a mass number equal to 247, which means that it contains 247 protons and neutrons inside its nucleus.

Since curium has an atomic number equal to 96, i.e. it contains 96 protons inside its nucleus, you can say that

96 protons + ? neutrons=247

This tells you that curium-247 contains

no. of neutrons=24796=151

neutrons inside its nucleus.