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 number of protons in the nucleus of an atom of a particular element. In a neutral atom, the atomic number equals the number of electrons. See also atom, electron, proton.