How to Use isotope in a Sentence

isotope

noun
  • And that’s just the tip of the—isotope.
    — Jordan Blum, Fortune, 13 June 2026
  • The peaks occur at around the first half-life of that isotope.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 8 Nov. 2017
  • This was the first case of an isotope with two different half-lives.
    — Artemis Spyrou, The Conversation, 24 May 2022
  • The day of remembrance is, in its own way, an isotope of that openness.
    — Sarah Scoles, Scientific American, 27 Jan. 2022
  • The isotopes suggest that this cat was one such honored captive.
    — Ryan P. Smith, Smithsonian, 19 Mar. 2018
  • When elephants eat plant matter, the isotope enters their teeth and tusks.
    — National Geographic, 5 Oct. 2016
  • But that’s where a radioactive isotope called carbon-14 may be able to help.
    — Daniel Oberhaus, Wired, 31 Aug. 2020
  • The smoking gun is an isotope of iron called iron-60, which has been found in large amounts on the seafloor.
    — Michael Irving, New Atlas, 2 Mar. 2025
  • Thick deposits of the isotope will be music to the ears of helium-3 hopefuls.
    — Robin George Andrews, Scientific American, 14 May 2026
  • Inhaling even a dust speck of one of those isotopes can be dangerous.
    — Vince Beiser, WIRED, 26 Apr. 2018
  • Female mice were fed chow containing the isotope, then mated with a male mouse.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 June 2019
  • Helium-3 is a non-radioactive isotope that could be used for power.
    — Fox News, 28 Sep. 2019
  • Lithium isotopes, too, record a sudden change in the ocean that could be the result of seafloor eruptions.
    — Scott K. Johnson, Ars Technica, 8 Feb. 2018
  • That makes enamel the gold standard in terms of preserving isotopes.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 6 Aug. 2019
  • Analysis of isotopes has been tested as a way to tell if a plant was harvested from the wild.
    — The Economist, 19 Oct. 2017
  • This sodium-39 was the most massive isotope of sodium known to exist.
    — Wired, 22 Nov. 2019
  • The microbes will consume these extra-heavy stable isotopes and pass them through the food web from one species to the next.
    — Amina Khan, latimes.com, 20 Apr. 2018
  • The researchers also measured isotopes of carbon that can tell you about what life was doing.
    — Scott K. Johnson, Ars Technica, 24 Oct. 2019
  • Harmful isotopes were carried by the winds as far as Ireland within a week.
    — The Economist, 4 June 2019
  • For the new study, researchers dated bones by measuring the amount of a carbon isotope in each one.
    — Alexander Nazaryan, New York Times, 21 Feb. 2025
  • The isotope of interest for space is americium-241.
    — Kaif Shaikh, Interesting Engineering, 14 Nov. 2025
  • Once the isotopes were prepared and the cyclotron was running, the process became a waiting game.
    — Max Springer, Scientific American, 24 July 2024
  • The excited states and gamma rays are a fingerprint for each isotope.
    — Kaif Shaikh, Interesting Engineering, 11 Aug. 2025
  • The oxygen isotope ratios of the samples go through three distinct phases.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 11 Aug. 2022
  • After the tusk was cut in half, the scientists used a laser to knock off specks along the length of it for isotope analysis.
    — New York Times, 12 Aug. 2021
  • The isotope is not concentrated in easy-to-access pipes or pockets.
    — Kaif Shaikh, Interesting Engineering, 24 Sep. 2025
  • The colder the temperature, the more that heavier isotopes are present.
    — Yereth Rosen, Anchorage Daily News, 4 Aug. 2017
  • Carbon-13 is the isotope, with 6 protons and 7 neutrons.
    — Keith Cooper, Space.com, 30 Mar. 2026
  • To get pH values, the authors turned to boron isotopes, which act as a proxy, tracking the pH of the oceans.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 30 Aug. 2017
  • The team found a strong and consistent depletion of heavy isotopes across all three elements.
    — Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 11 Jan. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'isotope.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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