Positron emission and electron capture both give a product nucleus whose atomic number is 1 less than the starting nucleus. Explain.

Video transcript

Hey everyone, we're told that when a new glide undergoes positron emission and electron capture, the daughter knew Clyde will have an atomic number of one more than the parent knew Clyde. Is this statement true or false for this question. We're going to denote our parent new glide as the element X. With a mass number of A and an atomic number of Z. So first let's go ahead and take a look at what happens during positron emission. Now, during positron emission, we have our parent new glide and our product is going to be that unknown plus that positron, which we're going to represent with an E and a zero as our mass number and a one for our atomic number. Now let's go ahead and determine the mass number and the atomic number of our unknown. Starting with our mass number, we have the A from our parent knew Clyde and this is going to be equal to this unknown plus zero. So this means our unknown is equal to a. Now let's go ahead and take a look at our atomic number. For our atomic number, we have the atomic number of our parent new glide, which is going to be equal to that unknown plus one. So this means our unknown is equal to Z -1. Now let's go ahead and take a look at electron capture again. We have our parent knew Clyde which is represented by an X. And a mass number of A and an atomic number of Z. So for an electron capture we have an electron that has no atomic mass and is represented by our electron With a mass number of zero and an atomic number of -1. And our product is going to be that unknown. So let's go ahead and do the same steps as we did in our previous one. So let's determine our mass number. So we have the mass number of our parent new glide plus zero, which is going to be equal to that unknown. So that unknown is going to be a. Now, let's go ahead and take a look at our atomic number. Our atomic number is going to be the atomic number of our parent. New Clyde -1 equals our unknown. So our unknown is equal to Z -1. So looking at the values we just calculated. It looks like our statement here is going to be false. Since the daughter knew Clyde has an atomic number of one less. Then the parent knew Clyde. And this is going to be our final answer. Now, I hope this made sense. And let us know if you have any questions