Average Atomic Mass Calculator

The average atomic mass calculator helps to calculate the average atomic mass based on the isotopic masses relative to their natural abundance in a sample substance.

What is Average Atomic Mass?

“The average atomic mass of an atom is the weighted average of all the isotopes present in a sample”

The average atomic mass is also known to be the average atomic weight of an element. The main reason for finding the average atomic mass of an element is that elements have different atomic masses but the same atomic number.

Examples:

• Hydrogen has three isotopes tritium, deuterium, and Protium
• Carbon has three isotopes C-12,C-13, C-14
• Oxygen has three isotopes O-16, O-17, O-18

You need to calculate the average atomic mass of the elements to know their atomic masses. This is the main reason the atomic numbers are always in a whole number while the atomic masses are in the form of decimals. If you are wondering how to calculate the average atomic mass of an element just use our average mass calculator.

How to Find the Average Atomic Mass?

Consider the three isotopes of oxygen-16, oxygen-17, and oxygen-18. Their relative atomic masses are 16 amu, 17amu, and 18 amu, respectively. The atomic number of oxygen is 8, which means that every oxygen atom has 8 protons, so the number of protons is fixed in the oxygen, but the number of neutrons is 8, 9, and 10 in the three isotopes respectively.

The average atomic mass calculator calculates the average atomic mass based on the isotopic masses relative to their natural abundance in a sample substance.

Now to find the average atomic mass of the oxygen, you need to add all the isotopes’ atomic masses and their relative percentage.

Given:

Natural abundance of nth isotope (f) = 90 % , 8 %, 2 %

Atomic mass of nth isotope (m) = 16 amu, 17amu, 18 amu

Solution:

When Natural abundance (f) values as a percentage, then divide by 100.

The average atomic mass formula:

Average Atomic Mass = (f1m1 + f2m2 + f3m3 … + fnmn) / 100

Now to calculate the average atomic mass of oxygen, first multiply the percentage of the abundance by the atomic masses. Then divide it by 100 to calculate the average atomic mass of oxygen of all three isotopes.

The average atomic mass calculator calculates the average atomic mass based on the isotopic masses relative to their natural abundance in a sample substance.

Average Atomic Mass of Oxygen = [ (90 x 16) + (8 x 17) + (2 x 18) ] / 100

It is essential to calculate average atomic mass of the substance to know the natural abundance of the element’s isotopes. The average atomic mass of oxygen is 16.12 amu 

Average Atomic Mass of Oxygen= 16.12 amu

The online average atomic mass calculator calculate average atomic mass element based on the masses of its isotopes and their natural abundance.

Average Atomic Masses Table:

The average atomic mass of an element is the average mass of all the isotopes of an element. Calculating average atomic mass of the elements is simple, if you learn what is the concept of the isotopes.

In the table below the average atomic masses of the first 30 elements are given:

Average Atomic Mass Calculator Working:

Our tool is simple to use and you need only a couple of steps to find the average atomic mass of an element.

Let’s see how?

Input:

• Select the number of isotopes
• Enter the percentage and the mass of all the isotopes
• Tap calculate 

Output:

• Average atomic mass 
• Step-by-step calculation 

FAQs:

What are Isotopes?

Isotopes of an element have the same number of the proton, but different numbers of neutrons. For calculating average atomic mass, you need to take the average of all the isotopes’ atomic weight relative to their percentage in the sample.

What is the Fractional Percentage?

The fractional percent is the total percentage of a particular isotope in a substance.

References:

From the source of angelo.edu: Atomic masses, The isotopes

From the source of getchemistryhelp.com: Atomic number, Example