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 or proton number (symbol Z) of a chemical element is the number of protons found in the nucleus of an atom of that element. It is identical to the charge number of the nucleus. The atomic number uniquely identifies a chemical element. In an uncharged atom, the atomic number is also equal to the number of electrons.