Sulfur-34 (${}^{34}\mathrm{S}$)

Sulfur-34 is a stable isotope of sulfur with 16 protons and 18 neutrons in its atomic nucleus. Its mass number is $34$, while its relative atomic mass is approximately $33.967867004$. NIST lists a representative isotopic abundance of $0.0425$, or $4.25\%$, alongside $0.9499$ for sulfur-32.^[ref] The representative composition does not require every natural sample to have exactly those fractions.

Comparing sulfur-34 with sulfur-32 illustrates how an isotope ratio differs from a fraction of all sulfur. The representative ratio isIn an idealized measurement that has already corrected differences in response and interferences, suppose the inferred atom counts are $N_{34}=450$ and $N_{32}=10000$. Their ratio is $0.045$, about $0.58\%$ higher than that representative ratio. This compares two isotopes; calculating the sulfur-34 fraction of all sulfur additionally needs the other isotopes in the denominator. Raw mass spectrometer signals are not automatically corrected atom counts.

Sulfur-34 and sulfur-32 have the same atomic number, so replacing one with the other preserves the element while changing nuclear mass. This makes isotope composition an additional descriptor of a sulfur-containing sample, distinct from its chemical formula. A stable isotope also provides a different kind of label from radioactive sulfur-35: its usefulness does not depend on detecting radioactive decay.