Standard atomic weight real life substances—for example, in pharmaceuticals and scientific research. Atomic weights are specific to single sources and samples of an element, such as the atomic weight of carbon in a particular bone from a particular archeological site. Standard atomic weight generalizes such values to the "range of atomic weights" which a chemist might expect to derive from many random samples from Earth. This range is the cause of the "interval notation" in some standard atomic weight values. Out of the 118 known chemical elements, 84 are stable and have this Earth-environment based value. Typically, such a value is, for example
Isotope the mass of the electrons associated with the atom, the latter because the electron:nucleon ratio differs among isotopes. The mass number is a dimensionless quantity. The atomic mass, on the other hand, is measured using the atomic mass unit based on the mass of the carbon-12 atom. It is denoted with symbols "u" (for unified atomic mass unit) or "Da" (for dalton). The atomic masses of naturally occurring isotopes of an element determine the atomic mass of the element. When the element contains "N" isotopes, the expression below is applied for the average atomic mass formula_1: formula_2 where "m", "m",