Talk:Nuclear isomer

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Help with this template Comments: edit – history – watch – refresh Contents 1 Rank of A 2 Importance of High 3 notation confusion 4 Ratings 5 IUPAC [edit] Rank of A This article is well-written with an appropriate series of sections identified by headings. It does have external references to scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals. It also has a history of years of contribution and refinement so I believe it represents a consensus. Myself, I already knew the material, but I do believe this article would be very useful to non-expert readers. Personally I would recommend it to colleagues in other fields of interest. --GoodElfNo3 16:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC) [edit] Importance of High This article contributes a depth of knowledge about a topic of broad concern, the physics underlying the existence of a loophole in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That makes the importance "High" in my opinion. --GoodElfNo3 17:07, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

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This article is missing a discussion of what a nuclear isomer is (it hints at spin, but how do spins turn into nucleuses in such a way that there are two ways to do it?) What kind of excited state are we talking about (more potential energy in terms of the strong force? You can tell I don't know enough to write the article...)? Also, if there are two nuclear isomers of, say, Element-99, how does one decide which one is designated "99" and which one is designated "99m" (I assume the former is the ground state, but without some quantum mechanical context it isn't clear that we are talking about "ground state" and "excited state" instead of two states which are somehow equal)? --Kingdon 21 Feb 2006

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Metastable isomers of a particular atom are usually designated with an "m" (or, in the case of atoms with more than one isomer, 2m, 3m, and so on).

Is it possible that the article should say "in the case of atoms with more than one excited nucleon" instead? --Yath 00:19, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

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I think the latest consensus is that the stimulated emission of Ta-180m's potential energy is possible, but the mechanism is different from that hypothesized for Hf-178m's, and that for Hafnium it may not be possible.

--24.80.110.173 04:45, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] notation confusion

The article states that successive metastable states are indicated with a number prefix to the "m" (m, 2m, etc). In the "Nearly-stable isotopes" section, however, there are some that are as a suffix (Hf-178-m2). Which way is right? DMacks 07:17, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Probably m2 is better.

--Drac2000 14:38, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

It certainly would be less ambiguous...does ^178mHf mean the isotope with mass=178, or the 178^th "m" isotope? If the former, there really isn't a way of inserting a prefixed "2" on the "m". Where is this notation officially documented? DMacks 15:11, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Please see if the link Examples helps. Taking a link to any of the isomers on the left of that page (ie one with an "m") gives some interesting insight.

--Drac2000 16:05, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Your recent edit finally motivated me to follow up on this. Thanks for the reference. DMacks 22:28, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to you for the nice examples in this new edit. --Drac2000 23:39, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ratings

In response to the request for ratings for this article, I have rated it A. But it might be even better and qualify as FA. See the Comments section for discussion.

GoodElfNo3 16:39, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IUPAC

Shouldn't the notation really be Hafnium-178m, not Hf-178m?

IUPAC notation allows Element-n or ⁿEl, but not El-n.