C6.

5c Weighted means
If you look at the Periodic Table, you will see that the relative atomic mass of chlorine is given as
35.5. The RAM of an element can also be thought of as the number of protons and neutrons (the
particles with mass in the nucleus) added together, so the RAM of an atom must be a whole
number.
Each element always has the same number of protons, but the number of neutrons may vary.
These different forms of the same element are called isotopes. Chlorine has two isotopes: 75%
of chlorine atoms have a relative atomic mass of 35 and 25% have a RAM of 37. The average of
35.5 is said to be a ‘weighted mean’ – it takes into account how many atoms of each isotope are
present. To calculate this we assume that we have 100 atoms of chlorine.
Mass of Number of atoms with this Mass of isotope in 100
isotope mass atoms of mixture

35 75 2625

37 25 925

total mass in 100 atoms 3550

average mass of one atom 35.50

A second example is the Group 1 metal, lithium. 7% of lithium atoms have a RAM of 6 and 93%
have a RAM of 7. These isotopes are sometimes written as lithium-6 and lithium-7.
Mass of Number of atoms with this Mass in 100 atoms of mixture
isotope mass

6 7 42

7 93 651

total mass in 100 atoms 693

average mass of 1 atom 6.93

Because this is so near 7, the RAM of lithium is usually given as 7.

Use this method to work out the weighted mean mass for each of the following mixtures of

isotopes: 1 bromine with 50% bromine-79 and 50% bromine-81

2 boron with 20% boron-10 and 80% boron-11

3 copper with 69% copper-63 and 31% copper-65

4 magnesium with 79% magnesium-24, 10% magnesium-25 and 11% magnesium-26 5

chromium with 4% chromium-50, 84% chromium-52, 10% chromium-53 and 2% chromium-54.

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