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/

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

#247.070 ~~ 247#

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" = 247 - 96 = 151#

neutrons inside its nucleus.