What is atomic mass?
Atomic mass
The atomic mass (ma) is the mass of an atom. Its unit is the unified atomic mass units (abbr. u) where 1 unified atomic mass unit is defined as ​1⁄12 of the mass of a single carbon-12 atom, at rest.[1] For atoms, the protons and neutrons of the nucleus account for nearly all of the total mass, and the atomic mass measured in u has nearly the same value as the mass number.
Atom
The development of the mass spectrometer allowed the mass of atoms to be measured with increased accuracy. The device uses a magnet to bend the trajectory of a beam of ions, and the amount of deflection is determined by the ratio of an atom's mass to its charge. The chemist Francis William Aston used this instrument to show that isotopes had different masses. The atomic mass of these isotopes varied by integer amounts, called the whole number rule. The explanation for these different isotopes awaited the discovery of the neutron, an uncharged particle with a mass similar to the proton, by the physicist James Chadwick in 1932. Isotopes were then explained as elements with the same number of protons, but different numbers of neutrons within the nucleus.