Friday, March 8, 2024

Chemistry pt. 3: Average atomic mass

For things at this scale, we need a unit of measurement, the name of this is the "Atomic mass unit" or AMU, the more modern version is the: "Unified mass unit", and written as U.

The weight of this mass unit is 1.660540 * 10^-27kg, for scale, it is a 0. With 26 zeros behind that, the mass of a Proton is approximately 1U, and one Neutron is also approximately 1U, it turns out a Proton is slightly heavier with a weight of 1.007U, and a Neutron is approximately 1.008U, an Electrons mass is instead very light compared to both, being 1/2000 the mass of a Neutron or Proton.

Thus the main mass is the Protons and Neutrons in the nucleus. 

Let's take an element: Hydrogen, let's figure out the mass of a Hydrogen atom, which is one Proton, since the amount of Protons is shown on the periodic table, it is very easy to say that Hydrogen has one Proton.

When we talk about variations and different versions of an atom, we call those Isotopes, All isotopese follow the "parent" element, as all Isotopes of that element have the same number of Protons, in this case, it is a single Proton from Hydrogen atom, but due to it being a Isotope, it has different numbers of Neutrons.

Notice how the element is written in the periodic table, it has a number on the top, the amount of Protons, the element name in the middle, and the bottom is the average weight of that atom, on the Hydrogen atom, the weight is 0.008 which is the for that element found on earth.

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