What does the atomic mass of an element show you?

Answer 1

The Atomic Mass is the total mass of all the sub atomic particles (i.e. the mass of the whole atom): Electrons, Neutrons and Protons.

Therefore, it identifies isotopes (as they have different number of sub atomic particales - even for the same element) and thus total mass differs.

There can be a fair amount of difference between the Atomic Mass of the most common isotope of an element and its Atomic Weight - which is averaged (weighted average). This makes a difference for single atom calculations, but makes little real difference in bulk calculations.

Answer 2

The atomic mass of an element tells you the average mass of an atom in the element.

Answer 3

It tells the sum of number of protons and neutrons in an atom and how many grams a moled of that type of atom would weigh.

Answer 4

The mass number determines how many nucleons (protons and neutrons) an atom has.

Answer 5

equals the number of protons and neutrons