Atomic Mass Calculations: Extra Help and Explanation

This is a thought question where you don't really need to do any

calculations

and it revolves around the idea of ​​a relative

atomic

mass

atomic

weight, so let's do a little refresher on that, let's say we have a type of pickup truck. Called the Rodeo truck, the rodeo truck comes in two types, the rodeo cloud is kind of a small thing that weighs 5,000 lbs and the Rodeo Cowboy which is monstrous and weighs 20,000 lbs. Now, what is the average weight of these two trucks? If I said average weight, what you would probably do is add the two weights and divide by two and you'll get 12,500 lbs, which is right between 5,000 for the clown and 20,000 for the cowboy, but What if I told you this?

I said that most people didn't like driving the clown because they thought it made them look like losers, so only 20% of the rodeo trucks on the road were rodeo clowns, on the other hand, 80% of the rodeo trucks on the road. road were the Rodeo Cowboy because people thought it made them look tough, so in that case, what is the average weight of all these trucks? Because it's only 20% clown and 80% cowboy, so this average doesn't really seem to make sense because we're supposed to have the same amount of both, but we have a lot more cowboy than clown and the cowboy weighs a lot more. , in this case we have to calculate what is called a relative. or a weighted average where we take the weight of each of these and multiply it by the percentage we have of it so 5,000 lb for the clown multiplied by 20% as a decimal plus 20,000 lb for the cowboy multiplied by 80% as a decimal and then, When we do that, we end up with an average that's not right in the middle, we end up with an average that's skewed closer to the weight of the Cowboy and that makes sense because there are a lot more Cowboy trucks on the road than our average of These weights should be closer to the weight of a jean.