deuterium
an isotope of hydrogen, having twice the mass of ordinary hydrogen; heavy hydrogen. Symbols:2H, D; atomic weight: 2.01; atomic number: 1.
Compare Meanings
Click for a side-by-side comparison of meanings. Use the word comparison feature to learn the differences between similar and commonly confused words.
Origin of deuterium
1Words Nearby deuterium
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use deuterium in a sentence
Within the atmosphere were signs of deuterium—a heavy isotope of hydrogen that can result from the breakdown of water.
Venus doesn’t have enough water in its clouds to sustain life | Neel V. Patel | June 28, 2021 | MIT Technology ReviewWhile free hydrogen atoms that were once part of a water molecule escape into space, free deuterium weighs enough to hang around in the air.
Mars Has Much More Water Than Previously Known—But There's a Catch | Jeffrey Kluger | March 16, 2021 | TimeIf all of Mars’s water had escaped to space, taking its free hydrogen atoms with it, there would be much more deuterium in the modern day Martian sky relative to the remaining free hydrogen—by some measures, more than twice as much.
Mars Has Much More Water Than Previously Known—But There's a Catch | Jeffrey Kluger | March 16, 2021 | TimeEvery second, the LUNA experiment fires 100 trillion protons at a target of deuterium.
Physicists Pin Down Nuclear Reaction From Moments After the Big Bang | Thomas Lewton | November 11, 2020 | Quanta MagazineIn 2014, Cooke and co-authors precisely measured the abundance of deuterium in the universe through observations of faraway gas clouds.
Physicists Pin Down Nuclear Reaction From Moments After the Big Bang | Thomas Lewton | November 11, 2020 | Quanta Magazine
From that, they extracted the ratio of the number of deuterium atoms to the number of hydrogen atoms.
They found that there are roughly 1,900 hydrogen atoms for each deuterium atom in the water on Comet 67P.
However, even that ginormous difference still shows about three times the amount of deuterium than we see on our planet.
One chemical test involves measuring the relative amount of deuterium in water.
For example, a common type of meteorite has similar mineral content to Earth, but a lot less deuterium.
Deuterons or alpha particles are obtained in a similar fashion using deuterium or helium gas in place of hydrogen.
LRL Accelerators | Lawrence Radiation Laboratory"It's true that one of the possibilities in building a hydrogen bomb concerns deuterium," the scientist said.
The Caves of Fear | John BlaineWell, heavy water is made of one atom of oxygen plus two atoms of deuterium, which is the first isotope of hydrogen.
The Caves of Fear | John BlaineThen, for a considerably higher price, he would undertake to collect a sample of the deuterium they were using.
The Caves of Fear | John Blaine
British Dictionary definitions for deuterium
/ (djuːˈtɪərɪəm) /
a stable isotope of hydrogen, occurring in natural hydrogen (156 parts per million) and in heavy water: used as a tracer in chemistry and biology. Symbol: D or ²H; atomic no: 1; atomic wt: 2.014; boiling pt: –249.7°C
Origin of deuterium
1Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Scientific definitions for deuterium
[ dōō-tîr′ē-əm ]
An isotope of hydrogen whose nucleus has one proton and one neutron and whose atomic mass is 2. Deuterium is used widely as a tracer for analyzing chemical reactions, and it combines with oxygen to form heavy water. Also called heavy hydrogen See Note at heavy water.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Browse