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.
It is conventionally represented by the symbol Z. The atomic number uniquely identifies a chemical element. In an uncharged atom, the atomic number is also equal to the number of electrons. The atomic number, Z, should not be confused with the mass number, A, which is the number of nucleons, the total number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an atom.