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Neutrons have little or no effect in chemistry. Their job is to stabilize the protons in the nuclei of atoms, because for some poorly understood reason atoms that contain a lot of protons are not stable unless they also contain a similar number of neutrons. Isotopes of elements are simply atoms that contain the same number of protons (that number defines what element you have) but different numbers of neutrons (which effect the atomic weight but not the atomic number).
An interesting fact about neutrons is that in isolation they are unstable: After a few minutes they decay into, amazingly, a hydrogen atom! The neutron somehow rearranges itself into a proton and an electron. This doesn't violate any conservation laws because the total charge is still the same (-1 + 1 = 0), and the total mass adds up minus some that goes into energy. And of course a hydrogen atom is nothing more than an electron in orbit around a proton, so what the neutron has decayed into is indeed a hydrogen atom.
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Tetraneutronium. (External Sample)
Controversial work has suggested that clusters of four neutrons might just be stable enough to call "element zero", an element with zero protons and zero electrons, just four neutrons. It would be one heck of a strange element if it really exists. New Scientist published this nice "periodic table entry" on the cover of their October 26, 2002 issue, and you can read the article online on their archive site. (It requires a login, which is free for subscribers to the print edition, and they offer a free 7-day trial for non-subscribers.)
Source: New Scientist Magazine
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 26 October, 2002
Text Updated: 11 August, 2007
Price: $0
Size: 0"
Purity: 0%
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