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 atomic number is the number of protons in every atom of that element. The number of electrons can change, forming ions, or the number of neutrons can change, forming isotopes, but the proton number defines the element. The modern periodic table orders the element by increasing atomic number.