What does "calcium-45" mean?

A radioactive isotope of calcium, ⁴⁵₂₀Ca, with 20 protons and 25 neutrons, and a half-life of 162.6 days; it is used as a tracer in studying calcium metabolism. As it decays it undergoes nuclear transmutation via electron emission, also called negative beta decay (β⁻-decay), into scandium.

Calcium-45

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Noun

1
A radioactive isotope of calcium, ⁴⁵₂₀Ca, with 20 protons and 25 neutrons, and a half-life of 162.6 days; it is used as a tracer in studying calcium metabolism. As it decays it undergoes nuclear transmutation via electron emission, also called negative beta decay (β⁻-decay), into scandium. uncountable

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.