Question

A certain element has four isotopes.
5.85% of has a mass of 53.93961 .
91.8% of has a mass of 55.934939 .
2.12% of has a mass of 56.93539 .
0.282% of has a mass of 57.93328 .
What is the average atomic mass of element ?
Express your answer numerically to three significant figures.

Answer 1

i got 56.2amu but it was wrong. i don't know how to find the average amu?

Answer 2

http://www.algebralab.org/practice/practice.aspx?file=algebra_averageatomicmass.xml

Answer 3

I would suggest finding the 100% mass of each of the isotopes, adding those, then dividing by 4

I will find the 100% mass for the first one:
if 5.85% has a mass of 53.93961, then
100% has a mass of 53.93961/5.85*100 or 922.0446154

I could be way off base here, perhaps a chemist could enlighten us.
The webpage suggested by "TutorCat" makes sense to me.

Answer 4

just throwing out a number because i'm bored: 55.8741 was what i got. I'm no chemist, but i wanted to take a shot at it and now i'm curious how close the real answer is to mine.

Answer 5

55.8