Atomic Mass of Candium (Candy-YUM!) 2B

      Ahhhh, candium. The tastiest element.

      The purpose of today's lab was to divide the candium elements into their respective isotopes -- regular, peanut, and pretzel, and then find the average atomic mass of a single element of candium, or one M&M.

Steve & I's finally average atomic mass for candium was 1.7 grams.

1. We asked Leila and Reshma what their average atomic mass was -- 1.4 grams. Our average atomic mass numbers are vary because our two groups have different data. Steve and I have a different number of M&M's as well as different sizes, and we also could have more or less isotopes. All of which could affect and change our average atomic mass (aam).
2. If larger samples of candium were used, the difference between our aam would become smaller than the other group's aam for the simple reason of a larger sample size equating less variation in mass. There is a larger chance in a bigger sample of the candium being close to a uniform aam.
3. Any random piece of candium from our sample would most likely not have the same average atomic mass that we calculated. This is because aam depends on all the varied masses of our candies all averaged together, also taking into account the abundance of the 3 isotopes. For example, the regular isotope is more likely than the peanut or pretzel isotopes to be closer to the overall aam, but any random sample will not have the same mass as the aam.