STSC11001/2 Contemporary Chemistry

Quantitative Chemistry

Making relative measurements

Almost all measurements involve comparing one object with another which
has been chosen as the “standard”.

When we measure distance or mass we are actually comparing our object

with the international standard metre rule or the international standard
kilogram (stored in Paris).

This idea of comparing one object relative to another is quite common in newspaper articles:

In Chemistry, we also use scale on which atoms are compared with one another. Given
several elements, provided we have exactly the same number of atoms, we can
compare their total masses and hence the relative masses of individual atoms.

Carbon-12 (126C) is used as the standard when measuring the relative mass of other atoms,
isotopes and compounds. By definition it has a relative atomic mass of ____

We can then define

Relative isotopic mass definition:

Relative molecular mass definition: