stable_isotopes

plasmapy.particles.atomic.stable_isotopes(argument: str | Integral | Particle | CustomParticle | Quantity | None = None, unstable: bool = False) list[str][source]

Return a list of all stable isotopes of an element, or if no input is provided, a list of all such isotopes for every element.

Parameters:
  • argument (atom-like) – A string or integer representing an atomic number or element, or a string representing an isotope.

  • unstable (bool) – If set to True, this function will return a list of the unstable isotopes instead of the stable isotopes.

Returns:

List of all stable isotopes of an element, sorted from low to high mass number. If an element has no stable isotopes, this function returns an empty list.

Return type:

list of str

Raises:

Notes

There are 254 isotopes for which no radioactive decay has been observed. It is possible that some isotopes will be discovered to be unstable but with extremely long half-lives. For example, bismuth-209 was recently discovered to have a half-life of about \(1.9 × 10^{19}\) years. However, such isotopes can be regarded as virtually stable for most applications.

See also

known_isotopes

Returns a list of isotopes that have been discovered.

common_isotopes

Returns isotopes with non-zero isotopic abundances.

Examples

>>> stable_isotopes("H")
['H-1', 'D']
>>> stable_isotopes(44)
['Ru-96', 'Ru-98', 'Ru-99', 'Ru-100', 'Ru-101', 'Ru-102', 'Ru-104']
>>> stable_isotopes("beryllium")
['Be-9']
>>> stable_isotopes("Pb-209")
['Pb-204', 'Pb-206', 'Pb-207', 'Pb-208']
>>> stable_isotopes(118)
[]

Find unstable isotopes using the unstable keyword.

>>> stable_isotopes("U", unstable=True)[:5]  # only first five
['U-217', 'U-218', 'U-219', 'U-220', 'U-221']