TABLE OF CONTENTS With very few exceptions, data on masses of nuclei refer to atomic masses or to masses of singly ionized atoms. The nuclear mass of an isotope with mass number A of element Z can be calculated from the atomic mass as:
where m e is the electron mass, and B e is the total atomic binding energy. The atomic masses are usually given in atomic mass units as relative atomic masses A r (see Appendix 3) and the derived quantities in energy units. The electronvolt (eV) maintained in standard laboratories by using the internationally adopted value for the ratio of frequency and voltage in the Josephson effect (Appendix 2, Table 1) was introduced by Audi and Wapstra in 1993 (Audi and Wapstra 1993a) for the atomic mass evaluation, because at that time it gave more consistent and accurate values than the international volt. Their adopted mass-energy conversion constant (Audi et al. 1993):
is smaller by a factor of only 1.6 10 7 than the most recent international value given in Appendix 2. Therefore, the evaluated data remain practically unaffected.
The quantity most frequently tabulated is the mass excess:
i.e. the difference between the atomic mass and the mass number A (Audi and Wapstra 1995). The total binding energy of the atom is:
where D(H) and D(n) denote the mass excess for the hydrogen atom and the neutron, respectively.
Other...
