In a way, passing an array as argument always loses a dimension. The reason behind is that, for historical reasons, arrays cannot be directly copied, and thus what is really passed is a pointer. This is a common source of errors for novice programmers.
atomic number represents the protons in atom. As a example hydrogen has one proton and atomic number is 1.
The count of neutrons and protons equals the mass number for an atom. This has its origin in the fact that the massive particles in the atom are protons and neutrons. The symbol for mass number is A. The entries in the periodic table do not show the mass numbers for atoms.