Even though all the components of an atom are important, the periodic table ignores the number of neutrons and electrons and defines an atom based solely on the number of protons it has in its ...

The number of neutrons in the nucleus, as you may have gathered from the above example, can however change, and we call atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons " isotopes ".

Scientists have long wondered whether there is a limit to the number of protons and neutrons that can be clustered together to form the nucleus of an atom.

An element with 17 protons will always be chlorine. However the mass number of the element can vary, which means that it can have different numbers of neutrons.

While it was once believed that the protons and neutrons were lumped together like a soup within the nucleus, it is now known that they are organized in shells. With the complete filling of a nuclear ...

The source of this fuss was zirconium-88. That’s a particular type, or isotope, of zirconium, distinguished by the number of neutrons it contains.