What is an atomic number?
1 Answer
Sep 13, 2017
By definition, the number of protons in the nucleus.
This is irrespective of the charge of the atom as well. For a given atom, we denote its isotope as:
""_(Z)^(A) X where:
A is the mass number (sum of protons and neutrons in nucleus).Z is the atomic number (number of protons in nucleus).X is the chemical symbol.
So if I gave you oxygen-17,
""_(8)^(17) O ,
it has
""_(8)^(17)O^(2-) ,
how many electrons does it have? (Not