Answer: protons and neutrons.
The nucleus is made up of 3 subatomic particles that are protons,neutrons and electrons.
General notation of an element is [tex]_{Z}^{A}\textrm{X}[/tex]
where, X is the Element, A is the Atomic Mass and Z is the Atomic Number
If we know the number of protons we can easily find out the atomic number of any element because Atomic Number = Number of protons in an element.
And in addition if we know the number of neutrons we can easily find out the atomic mass of an element because
Atomic Mass = (Number of protons) + (Number of neutrons)
If we get to know the atomic number and atomic mass, we can easily tell what element is it by looking from the periodic table.
