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A helium atom is an atom of the chemical ... is the reduced mass of an electron with respect ... The total ground state energy of the helium atom is −79. ...
Helium (from Greek: ἥλιος, romanized: helios, lit. 'sun') is a chemical element; it has symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table.
The atomic mass (ma or m) is the mass of an atom. Although the SI unit of mass is the kilogram (symbol: kg), atomic mass is often expressed in the non-SI unit dalton (symbol: Da) – equivalently, unified atomic mass unit (u). 1 Da is defined as 1⁄12 of the mass of a free carbon-12 atom at rest in its ground state. [1]
The mass number (symbol A, from the German word: Atomgewicht, "atomic weight"), [ 1 ] also called atomic mass number or nucleon number, is the total number of protons and neutrons (together known as nucleons) in an atomic nucleus. It is approximately equal to the atomic (also known as isotopic) mass of the atom expressed in atomic mass units.
This number was chosen so that if an element has an atomic mass of 1 u, a mole of atoms of that element has a mass close to one gram. Because of the definition of the unified atomic mass unit, each carbon-12 atom has an atomic mass of exactly 12 Da, and so a mole of carbon-12 atoms weighs exactly 0.012 kg. [62]
Terrestrial helium consists almost exclusively (all but ~2ppm) [16] of 4 He. 4 He's boiling point of 4.2 K is the lowest of all known substances except 3 He. When cooled further to 2.17 K, it becomes a unique superfluid with zero viscosity. It solidifies only at pressures above 25 atmospheres, where it melts at 0.95 K.
Atomic units are chosen to reflect the properties of electrons in atoms, which is particularly clear in the classical Bohr model of the hydrogen atom for the bound electron in its ground state: Mass = 1 a.u. of mass; Charge = −1 a.u. of charge; Orbital radius = 1 a.u. of length; Orbital velocity = 1 a.u. of velocity [44]: 597
Different isotopes of a given element are distinguished by their mass number, which is written as a superscript on the left hand side of the chemical symbol (e.g., 238 U). The mass number is always an integer and has units of "nucleons". Thus, magnesium-24 (24 is the mass number) is an atom with 24 nucleons (12 protons and 12 neutrons).