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63cu Research Paper

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The main components that make up copper are protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons are positively charged, electrons are negatively charged, and neutrons don’t have a charge. The nucleus is at the center of the atom, and it contains protons and neutrons. Electrons are “stored” in energy levels. Since protons have a +1 charge and neutrons don’t have a charge, the nucleus is positively charged. The two stable copper isotopes that should be describe are 63Cu and 65Cu. The composition of 63Cu is 0.6915 (15); the composition of 65Cu is 0.3085 (15) (“Isotopes of Copper.” Wikipedia). The abundance of 63Cu is 69.17% (2); the abundance of 65Cu is 30.83% (2) (“Copper Isotopes” – Cu Isotopes). The nucleus of any copper atom has 29 protons and electrons. …show more content…

There are 29 electrons in the copper atom. There are 29 electrons in copper because copper has to stay neutral, which means that there are also 29 protons. So, since electrons have a negative charge, and protons have a positive charge, 29 negative plus 29 positive equals no charge/neutral. The electron configuration in symbols can be translated by: the first number is the shell number, the letter is the subshell, and the “to the power of,” or superscript, is the number of electrons that are present in the subshell. In the “s” subshell, there is 1 orbital, in the “p” subshell there are 3 orbitals, and in “d” subshells, there are 5 orbitals (“Electron Shell.” Wikipedia). Each orbital can hold a maximum of two electrons. So, the “s” subshell can hold 2 electrons, the “p” subshell can hold 6 electrons, and the “d” subshell can hold 10 electrons. Since there are 29 electrons in copper, all of the orbitals in the subshells will be filled, except there will be one extra “s” subshell if you use 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 3d10 4s1. The fourth shell is the highest shell that contains electrons in copper. So, if you were to add up 4s + 4p + 4d + 4f, it would equal 32 electrons (“Electron Shell.”

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