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The unified atomic mass unit (u), or dalton (Da) or, sometimes, universal mass unit, is a small unit of mass used to express atomic and molecular masses. Mass is a fundamental concept in Physics, roughly corresponding to the Intuitive idea of how much Matter there is in an object The atomic mass (ma is the Mass of an atom most often expressed in unified atomic mass units The atomic mass may be considered to be the total mass The molecular mass (abbreviated m of a substance, more commonly referred to as molecular weight and abbreviated as MW, is the Mass of one It is defined to be one twelfth of the mass of an unbound atom of 12C at rest and in its ground state. Carbon-12 is the most abundant of the two stable Isotopes of the element Carbon, accounting for 98 In Quantum mechanics, a stationary state is an Eigenstate of a Hamiltonian, or in other words a state of definite energy

1 u = 1/NA gram = 1/ (1000 NA) kg   (where NA is Avogadro's number)
1 u = 1. The Avogadro constant (symbols L, N A also called Avogadro's number, is the number of "elementary entities" (usually Atoms 660538782(83)×10−27 kg = 931. 494027(23) MeV/c2

See 1 E-27 kg for a list of objects which have a mass of about 1 u. To help compare different orders of magnitude, the following list describes various Mass levels between 10&minus36&thinsp kg and 1053&thinspkg

The symbol amu for atomic mass unit is not a symbol for the unified atomic mass unit. Its use is an historical artifact (written during the time when the amu scales were used), an error (possibly deriving from confusion about historical usage), or correctly referring to the historical scales that used it (see History). Atomic masses are often written without any unit and then the unified atomic mass unit is implied. In biochemistry and molecular biology literature (particularly in reference to proteins), the term "dalton" is used, with the symbol Da. Biochemistry is the study of the chemical processes in living Organisms It deals with the Structure and function of cellular components such as Molecular biology is the study of Biology at a molecular level Proteins are large Organic compounds made of Amino acids arranged in a linear chain and joined together by Peptide bonds between the Carboxyl Because proteins are large molecules, they are typically referred to in kilodaltons, or "kDa", with one kilodalton being equal to 1000 daltons. In Chemistry, a molecule is defined as a sufficiently stable electrically neutral group of at least two Atoms in a definite arrangement held together by The unified atomic mass unit, or dalton, is not an SI unit of mass, although it is accepted for use with SI under either name.

The unit is convenient because one hydrogen atom has a mass of approximately 1 u, and more generally an atom or molecule that contains n protons and neutrons will have a mass approximately equal to n u. A hydrogen atom is an atom of the chemical element Hydrogen. The electrically neutral History See also Atomic theory, Atomism The concept that matter is composed of discrete units and cannot be divided into arbitrarily tiny In Chemistry, a molecule is defined as a sufficiently stable electrically neutral group of at least two Atoms in a definite arrangement held together by The proton ( Greek πρῶτον / proton "first" is a Subatomic particle with an Electric charge of one positive This article is a discussion of neutrons in general For the specific case of a neutron found outside the nucleus see Free neutron. (The reason is that a 12C atom contains 6 protons, 6 neutrons and 6 electrons, with the protons and neutrons having about the same mass and the electron mass being negligible in comparison. The electron is a fundamental Subatomic particle that was identified and assigned the negative charge in 1897 by J The mass of the electron is approximately 1/1836 of the mass of the proton). This is an approximation, since it does not account for the mass contained in the binding energy of an atom's nucleus; this binding energy mass is not a fixed fraction of an atom's total mass. Binding energy is the Mechanical energy required to disassemble a whole into separate parts The nucleus of an Atom is the very dense region consisting of Nucleons ( Protons and Neutrons, at the center of an atom The differences which result from nuclear binding are generally less than 0. 1 u, however. Chemical element masses, as expressed in u, would therefore all be close to whole number values (within 2% and usually within 1%) were it not for the fact that atomic weights of chemical elements are averaged values of the various stable isotope masses in the abundances which they naturally occur. [1] For example, chlorine has an atomic weight of 35. Chlorine (ˈklɔriːn from the Greek word 'χλωρóς' ( khlôros, meaning 'pale green' is the Chemical element with Atomic number 17 and 45 u because it is composed of 76% 35Cl (34. 96 u) and 24% 37Cl (36. 97 u).

Another reason the unit is used is that it is experimentally much easier and more precise to compare masses of atoms and molecules (determine relative masses) than to measure their absolute masses. Masses are compared with a mass spectrometer (see below). Mass spectrometry is an analytical technique that identifies the chemical composition of a compound or sample based on the Mass-to-charge ratio of charged particles

Avogadro's number (NA) and the mole are defined so that one mole of a substance with atomic or molecular mass 1 u will have a mass of precisely 1 g. The Avogadro constant (symbols L, N A also called Avogadro's number, is the number of "elementary entities" (usually Atoms The mole (symbol mol) is a unit of Amount of substance: it is an SI base unit, and almost the only unit to be used to measure this For example, the molecular mass of a water molecule containing one 16O isotope and two 1H isotopes is 18. Water ( H2[[oxygen O]] H OH) is the most abundant Molecule on Earth 's surface composing of about 70% of the Earth's surface as 0106 u, and this means that one mole of this monoisotopic water has a mass of 18. 0106 g. Water and most molecules consist of a mixture of molecular masses due to naturally occurring isotopes. For this reason these sort of comparisons are more meaningful and practical using molar masses which are generally expressed in g/mol, not u. Molar mass, symbol M, is the Mass of one mole of a substance ( Chemical element or Chemical compound) In other words the one-to-one relationship between daltons and g/mol is true but in order to be used accurately for any practical purpose any calculations must be with isotopically pure substances or involve much more complicated statistical averaging of multiple isotopic compositions.

Contents

History

The chemist John Dalton was the first to suggest the mass of one atom of hydrogen as the atomic mass unit. A chemist is a Scientist trained in the Science of Chemistry. John Dalton FRS (6 September 1766 &ndash 27 July 1844 was an English Chemist, Meteorologist and Physicist. Hydrogen (ˈhaɪdrədʒən is the Chemical element with Atomic number 1 Francis Aston, inventor of the mass spectrometer, later used 116 of the mass of one atom of oxygen-16 as his unit. Francis William Aston ( September 1 1877 &ndash November 20 1945) was a British Chemist and Physicist who won the Oxygen (from the Greek roots ὀξύς (oxys (acid literally "sharp" from the taste of acids and -γενής (-genēs (producer literally begetteris the

Before 1961, the physical atomic mass unit (amu) was defined as 116 of the mass of one atom of oxygen-16, while the chemical atomic mass unit (amu) was defined as 116 of the average mass of an oxygen atom (taking the natural abundance of the different oxygen isotopes into account). Year 1961 ( MCMLXI) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Isotopes (Greek isos = "equal" tópos = "site place" are any of the different types of atoms ( Nuclides Both units are slightly smaller than the unified atomic mass unit, which was adopted by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics in 1960 and by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry in 1961. The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics ( IUPAP) is an international Non-governmental organization devoted to the advancement of Physics. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry ( IUPAC) (aɪjuːpæk or ay-yoo-pec) is an international Non-governmental organization Hence, before 1961 physicists as well as chemists used the symbol amu for their respective (and slightly different) atomic mass units. One still sometimes finds this usage in the scientific literature today. However, the accepted standard is now the unified atomic mass unit (symbol u), with: 1 u = 1. 000 317 9 amu (physical scale) = 1. 000 043 amu (chemical scale). Since 1961, by definition the unified atomic mass unit is equal to one-twelfth of the mass of a carbon-12 atom.

References

  1. ^ Exact Masses and Isotopic Abundances of the Elements - Alphabet

See also

External links

The molecular mass (abbreviated m of a substance, more commonly referred to as molecular weight and abbreviated as MW, is the Mass of one The mass-to-charge ratio, is a Physical quantity that is widely used in the Electrodynamics of charged particles e

Dictionary

atomic mass unit

-noun

  1. (chemistry) a unit of mass equal to 1/12 the mass of an atom of the 12C isotope of carbon
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