Question

What do Carbon-12, Carbon-13, Carbon-14 have in common? How are they different? What do you call these 3 types of atoms?

Answer 1

Answer:

Part 1.

Carbon-12, Carbon-13, Carbon-14 have in common = Proton number.

They all are natural isotopes of carbon.

• Carbon-12: 6 protons.
• Carbon-13: 6 protons.
• Carbon-14: 6 protons.

Part 2.

They are different on the basis of mass numbers, neutron numbers and properties related to atomic masses.

• Carbon-12: 6 neutron,   12 mass number.
• Carbon-13:  7 neutron,   13 mass number.
• Carbon-17:  8 neutron,   14 mass number.

Part 3.

We call these 3 types of atoms isotopes of carbon.

• An isotope is a form of a chemical element whose atomic nucleus contains Same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons.
• So according to the definition of isotopes, these all three elements are isotopes of carbon.