Hydrogen Isotopes - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems
Get help from an AI Tutor
Ask a question to get started.
1
concept
Hydrogen Isotopes
Video duration:
2m
Play a video:
Now, one key feature about hydrogen is that it possesses three isotopes. Here, we call these isotopes protium, which is just regular hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. So when we first talk about protium or hydrogen, we see that it has um the most abundance out of the three isotopes. This is the one we're most familiar with. And we're going to say here that it has an atomic number of one, which means it has one proton and it also has a mass number of one. When we subtract these, this gives us a number of neutrons which is zero. Next, we have deuterium, which is another isotope of hydrogen. Here, we can write it as 2/1 H or we can do 2/1 D for deuterium. Here. This one has less than 1% abundance. So less than 1% of all the hydrogen that exists in the universe is in this form. We're gonna say here we still have one proton. And when we do two minus one that gives us one neutron, now, tritium, tritium is very scarce, even more scarce than deuterium and it's radioactive. It's created from the neutron bombardment of lithium. Six. And by bombarding lithium six with neutrons, this is created. We also say that tritium itself can undergo electron emission. These are ideas that we've talked about in our chapter about radioactive processes. Now, here we'd say it still has one proton. And then we're going to say here, three minus one gives us two neutrons. Besides these three, we can talk about D 20. This might seem pretty familiar because it's similar to H2O, we call this deterd water. So this is the water composed with deuterium isotope. Some key takeaways about deterd water is that it's much heavier because deuterium has a larger mass number or mass than regular hydrogen. So it's much heavier than regular water and it's gonna have a higher melting point and boiling point and it's also denser than regular water. Now, like we said before, when it comes to tritium, it's a radioactive isotope. You can look at notes dealing with tritium when you look under beta decay topic for more information on our radioactive reactions. So just remember when it comes to hydrogen, these are the three isotopes that it possesses.
2
example
Hydrogen Isotopes Example
Video duration:
1m
Play a video:
In this example question, it says, how are the three isotopes different from each other? Select the correct answer. So here it says protium is half the mass of tritium due to the difference in the number of neutrons. So protium is just regular hydrogen. And then tritium is this the radioactive isotope of hydrogen. Here, the mass of hydrogen on our periodic table is around 1 g per mole, which is related to its mass number. And tritium here is about 3 g per mole. Protium is not half the mass of tritium to be half it have to be at least 1.5. Deuterium is the most, is more abundant than protium. No protium is the most abundant form of of hydrogen. All three isotopes possess slightly different electron configurations. Now your electron configurations is based on your number of electrons, all of them have the same number of electrons one. So they all would have the same electron configurations. So this leaves D tritium is the only radioactive isotope of hydrogen and is the rarest of the three. This is true. So here our answer is option D
3
Problem
Problem
Select the correct explanation of how D2O varies from H2O.
A
Heavy water contains the second most abundant isotope of H, while regular water contains the most abundant isotope.
B
Water containing deuterium is radioactive.
C
Heavy water is composed of 2 tritium atoms and 1 O atom; regular water is composed of 2 protium atoms and 1 O atom.
D
Chemical properties of heavy water are identical to those of regular water.
Do you want more practice?
We have more practice problems on Hydrogen Isotopes