Oxygen is denoted as 16O8. How many protons and neutrons does an oxygen atom have?

Question

Oxygen is denoted as  16O8. How many protons and neutrons does an oxygen atom have?

anonymous · Answer

you can figure it out yourself actually. two options:

- type 'oxygen' into wikipedia and read
-calculate using the following info:

protons and neutrons both approx. weigh '1'. you know because of the atomic number (8) which was provided in your example that there are 8 protons. the number of neutrons therefore is the atomic mass (16) minus number of protons (8).
little hint: if the mass number is not round (for instance H: mass is 1.01), you can guess that 1% of H atoms have a neutron and 99% don't.

abhisar · Answer

In $\sf ^{16}O_8$, 16 represents the mass number of oxygen and 8 represents the atomic number.

Atomic number = No. of protons
Mass number = No of protons + No of neutrons



$\therefore$ No of protons = Atomic number and No of neutrons = Mass number - ?