query: What mental effects can a mother experience after childbirth?

title: Postpartum depression

text: Postpartum depression (PPD), also called postnatal depression, is a type of mood disorder associated with childbirth, which can affect both sexes.[1][3] Symptoms may include extreme sadness, low energy, anxiety, crying episodes, irritability, and changes in sleeping or eating patterns.[1] Onset is typically between one week and one month following childbirth.[1] PPD can also negatively affect the newborn child.[2]

title: Funnyhouse of a Negro

text: Funnyhouse of the Negro demonstrates how a person can be emotionally and mentally damaged by something that didn’t directly involve them. Sarah experiences self-hatred because of her blackness and what it represents in her life: her father; the man who raped her mother. The fact that Sarah's father kills himself because of her rejection serves to damage her further. The effect of having nobody to support her or tell her the truth of what happened between her mother and father (the end of the play implies that the story Sarah knew may not have been true) causes her to create multiple versions of herself to make sense of what was happening. To pathologize Sarah's experience in the play, both multiple personality disorder and schizophrenia seem possible. The audience can’t tell whether she’s speaking out loud when she interacts with these characters, which would differentiate those two disorders. It's hard to distinguish whether or not the audience is experiencing the play through her head or if it's happening in the real world. Either way, Sarah has mental and emotional issues that ultimately lead to her death.

title: Abuse during childbirth

text: Investigations into the prevalence of these practices have been conducted by the World Health Organization. Their studies demonstrate that this is a global problem. Women experience disrespectful, abusive or neglectful treatment during their childbirth when the birth occurs in medical and health facilities. The abusive relationship and trust between women and health providers can create a great reluctance to obtain medical assistance during birth. Disrespectful and abusive treatment can be experienced during pregnancy. During childbirth, a woman is very vulnerable and cannot protect herself. The results of this abuse can have very negative consequences for the infant and the mother.

title: Posttraumatic stress disorder

text: Women who experience miscarriage are at risk of PTSD. Those who experience subsequent miscarriages have an increased risk of PTSD compared to those experiencing only one. PTSD can also occur after childbirth and the risk increases if a woman has experienced trauma prior to the pregnancy. Prevalence of PTSD following normal childbirth (that is, excluding stillbirth or major complications) is estimated to be between 2.8 and 5.6% at 6 weeks postpartum, with rates dropping to 1.5% at 6 months postpartum. Symptoms of PTSD are common following childbirth, with prevalence of 24-30.1% at 6 weeks, dropping to 13.6% at 6 months. Emergency childbirth is also associated with PTSD. Some women experience PTSD from their experiences related to breast cancer and mastectomy.

title: Unica Zürn

text: The majority of her mature texts, if not explicitly autobiographical, closely resemble the author’s life experiences. "Dark Spring" is a coming of age novel, of sorts, that follows a young woman as she has her first sexual encounters and experiences the first hints of mental illness. Several recurring archetypal characters appear in the book: the idealized father, the despised mother, and a troubled girl with masochistic tendencies. Disconcertingly, Zürn’s death seems to be foreshadowed in the text as the protagonist of "Dark Spring" eventually commits suicide by jumping out of her bedroom window. The posthumously published "The Man of Jasmine" "and Other Texts" and the expanded version,"The House of Illnesses: Stories and Pictures from a Case of Jaundice", are insightful examinations of mental collapse that detail Zürn’s psychological experiences and multiple hospitalizations. The nightmarish novella "The Trumpets of Jericho", a disturbing account of childbirth, was recently published in English.

title: Mental image

text: A mental image or mental picture is the representation in a person's mind of the physical world outside that person. It is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of perceiving some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses. There are sometimes episodes, particularly on falling asleep (hypnagogic imagery) and waking up (hypnopompic), when the mental imagery, being of a rapid, phantasmagoric and involuntary character, defies perception, presenting a kaleidoscopic field, in which no distinct object can be discerned. Mental imagery can sometimes produce the same effects as would be produced by the behavior or experience imagined.

title: Judith Arcana

text:
Arcana's poetry collection "What if your mother" (2005) offers poems and monologues examining a constellation of motherhood themes including abortion, adoption, miscarriage and the biotechnology of childbirth, as well as the daily experience of mothering.
In her review of the collection in "Affilia" (see references), Merle Hoffman describes Arcana's poems as "maps of interior psychological and physiological journeys" that meet the unnamed experience (abortion) "with bold lyricism, passion, and creative imagery."

title: Rh disease

text: Most Rh disease can be prevented by treating the mother during pregnancy or promptly (within 72 hours) after childbirth. The mother has an intramuscular injection of anti-Rh antibodies (Rho(D) immune globulin). This is done so that the fetal rhesus D positive erythrocytes are destroyed before the immune system of the mother can discover them and become sensitized. This is passive immunity and the effect of the immunity will wear off after about 4 to 6 weeks (or longer depending on injected dose) as the anti-Rh antibodies gradually decline to zero in the maternal blood.

title: Obstetrical forceps

text: Child birth was not considered a medical practice before the eighteenth century. It was mostly overseen by a midwife, mother, stepmother, neighbor, or any female relative. "Around the 19th and 20th Century, childbirth was considered dangerous for women." With the introduction of obstetrical forceps, this allowed non-medical professionals, such as the aforementioned individuals, to continue to oversee childbirths. In addition, this gave some of the public more comfort in trusting childbirth oversight to common people. However, the introduction of obstetrical forceps also had a negative effect, because there was no medical oversight of childbirth by any kind of medical professional, this exposed the practice to unnecessary risks and complications for the fetus and mother. These risks could range from minimal effects to lifetime consequences for both individuals. The baby could develop cuts and bruises in various body parts due to the forcible squeezing of his or her body through the mother’s vagina. In addition, there could be bruising on the baby’s face if the forceps' handler were to squeeze too tight. In some extreme cases, this could cause temporary or permanent facial nerve injury. Furthermore, if the forceps' handler were to twist his or her wrist while the grip was on the baby’s head, this would twist the baby’s neck and cause damage to a cranial nerve, resulting in strabismus. In rare cases, a clavicle fracture to the baby could occur. The addition of obstetrical forceps came with complication to the mother during and after childbirth. The use of the forceps gave rise to an increased risk in cuts and lacerations along the vaginal wall. This, in turn, would cause an increase in post-operative recovery time and increase the pain experienced by the mother. In addition, the use of forceps could cause more difficulty evacuating during the recovery time as compared to a mother who did not use the forceps. While some of these risks and complications were very common, in general, many people overlooked them and continued to use them.

title: Childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder

text: Childbirth-related PTSD is not a recognized diagnosis in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders". Many women presenting with symptoms of PTSD after childbirth are misdiagnosed with postpartum depression or adjustment disorders. These diagnoses can lead to inadequate treatment.

title: Epidural administration

text:
Epidural analgesia provides rapid pain relief in most cases. It is more effective than opioids and other common modalities of analgesia in childbirth. Epidurals during childbirth are the most commonly used anesthesia in this situation. The medication concentrations and doses are kept low to decrease the side effects to both mother and baby. When in labor the mother does not usually feel pain after an epidural but they do still feel the pressure. Women are able to bear down and push with contractions. Epidural clonidine is rarely used but has been extensively studied for management of analgesia during labor. Epidural analgesia is a relatively safe method of relieving pain in labor. In a 2018 Cochrane review which included 52 randomized controlled studies involving more than 11,000 women, where most studies compared epidural analgesia with opiates, epidural analgesia in childbirth was associated with the following advantages and disadvantages:
However, the review found no difference in overall Caesarean delivery rates, nor were there effects on the baby soon after birth. Also, the occurrence of long-term backache was no different whether an epidural was or was not used.

title: Mental image

text: Mental imagery can act as a substitute for the imagined experience: Imagining an experience can evoke similar cognitive, physiological, and/or behavioral consequences as having the corresponding experience in reality. At least four classes of such effects have been documented.

title: Maternity blues

text: Maternity blues, also known as baby blues and postpartum blues, is a transient condition that 75-80% of mothers could experience shortly after childbirth with a wide variety of symptoms which generally involve mood lability, tearfulness, and some mild anxiety and depressive symptoms. Baby blues is not postpartum depression, unless it is abnormally severe.After the placenta is delivered, the placental "hormone factory" shuts down causing radical changes in hormone levels, and the woman can suffer symptoms due to withdrawal from the high pregnancy levels of estrogen, progesterone and endorphins. Combined with this shift in hormone levels is the physical, mental and emotional exhaustion - as well as sleep deprivation typical of parenting a newborn. All of these factors contribute to the condition.

title: Childbirth in Sri Lanka

text: Sri Lanka does not have a system to record maternal morbidity, but research suggests maternal morbidity is an area of concern among Sri Lankan mothers. Sri Lankan mothers generally feel that it is natural to experience ill health after childbirth. About 90% of women who deliver vaginally and 75% women who deliver by C-section report illness in the puerperium period. Examples of these illnesses include excessive bleeding, fever, constipation, breast engorgement, painful urination, backache and abdominal pain. Buddhist mothers have the highest incidence of illness while Muslim mothers had the fewest number of poor health outcomes after birth.

title: Mental calculation

text: Physical exertion of the proper level can lead to an increase in performance of a mental task, like doing mental calculations, performed afterward. It has been shown that during high levels of physical activity there is a negative effect on mental task performance. This means that too much physical work can decrease accuracy and output of mental math calculations. Physiological measures, specifically EEG, have been shown to be useful in indicating mental workload. Using an EEG as a measure of mental workload after different levels of physical activity can help determine the level of physical exertion that will be the most beneficial to mental performance. Previous work done at Michigan Technological University by Ranjana Mehta includes a recent study that involved participants engaging in concurrent mental and physical tasks. This study investigated the effects of mental demands on physical performance at different levels of physical exertion and ultimately found a decrease in physical performance when mental tasks were completed concurrently, with a more significant effect at the higher level of physical workload. The Brown-Peterson procedure is a widely known task using mental arithmetic. This procedure, mostly used in cognitive experiments, suggests mental subtraction is useful in testing the effects maintenance rehearsal can have on how long short-term memory lasts.

title: Role of chance in scientific discoveries

text: The hallucinogenic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) were discovered by Albert Hofmann, who was originally working with the substance to try and treat migraines and bleeding after childbirth. Hofmann experienced mental distortions and suspected it may have been the effects of LSD. He decided to test this hypothesis on himself by taking what he thought was "an extremely small quantity": 250 micrograms. Hofmann's description of what he experienced as a result of taking so much LSD is regarded by Royston Roberts as "one of the most frightening accounts in recorded medical history".

title: Elisabeth Bing

text: Her interest in obstetrics began after working with new mothers in hospital. At the time, standard childbirth procedures involved giving mothers large amounts of medication, and keeping them in hospital for 10 days after they gave birth. Bing's job was to give physical therapy to these postpartum mothers. After talking about her experiences at the hospital with one of her part-time private patients, she learned of Grantly Dick-Read's book "Natural Childbirth". She was unable to meet Read or other like-minded individuals because of the outbreak of World War II, so she taught herself as much as she could about obstetrics.

title: Emily A. Holmes

text: Holmes's major interest is in mental imagery, its effect on emotion, and how it can be used in cognitive behavior therapy to increase the effectiveness of treatments for anxiety and mood disorders. With Andrew Matthews, Holmes outlined three different ways that mental imagery alters emotional experiences. First, mental imagery engages the same neurocircuitry that underlies the processing of sensory signals, which serves to direct attention towards potentially threatening stimuli, for example. Second, as a consequence of the overlapping neurocircuitry, one is able to mentally place oneself in an emotionally arousing situation and experience heightened emotions as if the situation were real. Third, the act of remembering past experiences may bring up emotions as if one were reliving the experience (autonoetic consciousness).

title: Postpartum period

text: During the subacute postpartum period, psychological disorders may emerge. Among these are postpartum depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and in rare cases, puerperal psychosis. Postpartum mental illness can affect both mothers and fathers, and is not uncommon. Early detection and adequate treatment is required. Approximately 25% – 85% of postpartum women will experience the "blues" for a few days. Between 7% and 17% may experience clinical depression, with a higher risk among those women with a history of clinical depression. Prevalence of PTSD following normal childbirth (excluding stillbirth or major complications) is estimated to be between 2.8 and 5.6% at 6 weeks postpartum.

title: Maternal bond

text: Childbirth is an experience that can strengthen the mother and child bond. Factors such as a traumatic birth, the mother's childhood, medical stress, lack of support and the influence of a spouse or partner can weaken the bond.

title: Pain management during childbirth

text: Perineal pain after childbirth has immediate and long-term negative effects for women and their babies. These effects can interfere with breastfeeding and the care of the infant. The pain from injection sites and possible episiotomy is managed by the frequent assessment of the report of pain from the mother. Pain can come from possible lacerations, incisions, uterine contractions and sore nipples. Appropriate medications are usually administered. Routine episiotomies have not been found to reduce the level of pain after the birth.

title: Abuse during childbirth

text:
Tanzania is a country with concern on abuse on women during childbirth. In 2011, Shannon McMahon and others explored whether or not the supposed interventions to lower abuse during childbirth have been in effect. When interviewing women, they referred to their experiences as neutral or better. However, after being shown the different aspects of abuse, a overwhelming majority of the women in turn had actually experienced abuse during childbirth.
In 2014, Hannah Ratcliffe and others did a study to explore possible interventions to improve the experiences of disrespect and abuse during childbirth. This study was conducted between 2013 and 2014. They implemented a "open birth day" which was to facilitate communication between patients and providers and to educate on the procedures surrounding birth. Aside from open birth day, they also implemented a "respectful maternity care workshop" which was to help create conversation surrounding respect between staff and towards patients. What they found was that this approach was successful in helping reconstruct systems without being high in cost. There was an increase of 60% in satisfaction with women's delivery experience.
During the same time as Ratcliffe's study, Stephanie Kujawaki and others did a comparative study of before intervention to reduce childbirth abuse and after. The baseline for the study was conducted in 2011-2012 and the final half of the study was conducted in 2015. What they found is that there was a 66% reduction in experiencing abuse and disrespect during childbirth. This study shows that with community and health system reforms can change and reshape norms in which women are mistreated during childbirth.

title: Psychiatric disorders of childbirth

text: Psychiatric disorders of childbirth are mental disorders developed by the mother related to the delivery process itself. They overlap with the organic prepartum and postpartum psychoses and other psychiatric conditions associated with having children. Symptoms include rage, or in rare cases, neonaticide.

title: Control (1987 film)

text: This story takes place during an experiment concerning psychological effects of mental fatigue on those locked in a fallout shelter for a long period of time. Twelve subjects are locked in a nuclear fallout shelter to see how long they can endure before mental breakdown occurs. After the experiment Dr. Herbert Monroe (Burt Lancaster) tells the world about this terrifying experiment and its outcome.

title: Childbirth in Sri Lanka

text: During pregnancy, family members take care to please the pregnant mother and protect her, and her unborn child, by relieving her of household duties. The pregnant woman's mother, grandmother or mother-in-law supervises meals. While pregnant, women may experience "Doladuka", or suffering of two hearts. This experience includes unusual desires to eat particularly sour fruits or indulge in specific acts. These wishes must be fulfilled to protect the fetus from physical or mental defects. Pregnant women avoid eating twinned foods as they are thought to lead to the birth of twins. Relatives and friends visit often to give gifts of fruits and boiled rice with curry wrapped in a banana leaf. Traditionally, baby showers are considered bad luck and gifts are not given until after the birth of the child. When preparing clothing for the new baby, care is taken to never complete the garment before the birth of the baby, as this assumes the birth is a certainty.

title: Mental health in the United Kingdom

text: Agnes Hann of the National Childbirth Trust said, "These findings are shocking, and mean that thousands of women experiencing potentially serious perinatal mental health problems are not getting the support they need. Perinatal mental illness can have a severe and long-term impact on mothers, babies and families. In extreme circumstances, it can result in tragedy – suicide is a leading cause of maternal death." From roughly 10% to 20% of women giving birth experience some type of mental illness such as anxiety and depression or more complex problems like PTSD and psychosis. With about 665,000 births a year in England 66,500–133,000 women a year develop illnesses. In 2016, 13,000 women were treated by perinatal teams while 800 became inpatients. This means the majority were untreated.

title: Kim Yi-seol

text: Kim Yi-seol’s works feature a lot of stories that have to do with the relationship between the mother and the child, such as childbirth and childcare. Kim Yi-seol has said that she wouldn’t be able to write such stories if she hadn’t had the experience of childbirth. She has expressed that through pregnancy and giving birth, she has experienced how children are weak and insecure, and how their bonds with their mothers should not be broken. Her experiences of childbirth and childcare has also affected her thoughts on writing fiction. It made her realize the anxiety for completing the draft as well as a sense of duty. When she was writing Nappeun pi (나쁜 피 Bad Blood), she had started writing only 3 days after her childbirth.

title: Pain management during childbirth

text: Preparation for childbirth can effect the amount of pain experienced during childbirth. It is possible to take a childbirth class, consult with those managing the pregnancy, and writing down questions can assist in getting the information that a woman needs to help manage pain. Simple interaction with friends and family can alleviate concerns.

title: Healthcare in Pakistan

text: Depression often starts at young age and affects women more commonly than men. One or two mothers out of 10 have depression after childbirth. Depression also limits a mother’s capacity to care for her child, and can seriously affect the child’s growth and development. A study showed that exposure to maternal mental distress is associated with undernutrition in 9‐month infants in urban Pakistan.

title: Tokophobia

text: Primary tokophobia is the fear and deep-seated dread of childbirth in women who have never experienced birth. It may pre-date pregnancy and can start in adolescence or begin in pregnancy. This may relate back to their own mother's experience or be triggered by exposure to childbirth without adequate explanation at a young age. It may also be experienced by women who have been sexually abused or raped; childbirth could trigger flashbacks in women who are traumatised.

title: Childbirth in Trinidad and Tobago

text: Postpartum depression is not carefully monitored or measured in the country. As part of the public health facilities, there is a six-week postpartum checkup, during which time this condition can perhaps be detected, but there is little follow up with the mother between discharge and this checkup. Although, if the mother chooses, she can visit a physician in her local health clinic at any time. In the private health facilities, mothers are assigned a specific pediatrician who examines the newborn at birth; this personal physician can be contacted by the mother if she chooses to do so, in regards to postpartum depression. At Mamatoto, discharge typically occurs four hours following birth, after which the health staff call the mother every single day for a week, and then once a week until the six-week postpartum visit. In this way, there is ample follow up to give health personnel the opportunity to ensure the mother’s mental health.


query: When was the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum first opened?

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: The Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum – formerly The Smith Institute – has played a very special part in the history of Stirling since its foundation in 1874. Established by the bequest of artist Thomas Stuart Smith (1815–1869) on land supplied by the Burgh of Stirling, it is an historic public-private partnership which has continued to the present day. It was founded as a gallery of mainly contemporary art, with museum and library reading room ‘for the benefit of the inhabitants of Stirling, Dunblane and Kinbuck’.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum is an institution based in Stirling, Central Scotland, dedicated to the promotion of cultural and historical heritage and the arts, from a local scale to nationally and beyond. It is also known locally by its original name of "The Smith Institute". Its current Director since 1994 is Dr Elspeth King.

title: Elspeth King

text: In 2018, the Stirling Smith museum of which Smith was the Director at the time, was threatened with closure due to funding cuts. A petition was mounted to combat the closure and gained over 7000 signatures. After the public campaign the museum was saved.Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

title: Thomas Stuart Smith

text: Thomas Stuart Smith (1815 - 1869) was a Scottish painter and philanthropist known for creating what is now called the Stirling Smith Museum and Art Gallery, located in Stirling, Scotland.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: Today, it functions as a gallery, museum and cultural centre for the Stirling area. It is the repository for the historical artefacts and paintings of Stirlingshire, at the same time offering exhibition opportunities for contemporary artists. Over twenty community groups meet regularly in its lecture theatre, and a café and biodiversity garden are among its newest attractions.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: At this time, the Smith Institute was already 70 years old and had a large collection of folk life material relating to lighting, heating, cooking, spinning and weaving, agriculture and Stirling life in times past. Its use as a billet for troops in both World Wars curtailed its potential and kept it closed, in the latter instance, until 1948. The rest of the twentieth century was spent in repairing the damage and recovering from the war, and none of the other rural communities to whom Eunice Murray was appealing found the resources to set up additional museums. Otherwise, Stirlingshire might well have had museums in Aberfoyle, Bannockburn, Callendar, Cowie, Doune, Dunmore, Fallin, Gargunnock, Killearn, Killin, Kippen, Plean, St . Ninians and Thornhill. The circumstances were right in Dunblane, where the museum was established in 1943. At present, only the Stirling Smith, Dunblane Museum and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Museum operate within the vast 2,200 square kilometres of the Stirling Council area.

title: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

text: The Staatsgalerie Stuttgart ("State Gallery") is an art museum in Stuttgart, Germany, it opened in 1843. In 1984, the opening of the Neue Staatsgalerie ("New State Gallery") designed by James Stirling transformed the once provincial gallery into one of Europe's leading museums.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: When the Smith first opened to the public, almost equal amounts space were devoted to the gallery and museum. There was no provision for workshop or storage space and the anticipated expansion on the 2-acre (8,100m2) site did not happen. The pressing need for storage and workshop space has resulted in the loss of a third of the public area for that purpose and most of the fine art collection is at present confined to storage. The pressure for temporary exhibition space keeps Galleries 1 and 2 filled with constantly changing exhibitions, mainly by contemporary artists. The occupation of the Gallery 3, the largest exhibition space, with museum display is a temporary measure until new storage can be found and the splendour of this huge picture gallery restored to its original purpose.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: The Smith Institute first opened to the public on 11 August 1874. It was an occasion for great celebration in Stirling, and the shops in the town closed at 12 noon to allow people to attend the opening. Nevertheless, there were some mixed feelings, for Thomas Stuart Smith, had died in 1869 and the location of the building was felt by many people to be too far away from the old town.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: The Macfarlane Museum was assembled by John Macfarlane of Coneyhill, Bridge of Allan (1785–1868) whose wealth was derived from textile manufacture in Manchester. He was the great local champion of the principle of the free library in Stirling where he opened a library and reading room in 1854. In 1881 the Macfarlane Free Library was transferred to the Smith along with the Macfarlane Museum which contained many important local objects and the Smith curator was charged with the additional task of looking after it. The Museum Hall, Bridge of Allan was built by the Macfarlane Trustees in 1887 as a Concert Hall. The marble bust of John MacFarlane was acquired for the Smith collection in 2002.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: It was said that ‘Smith’s munificence inaugurated what might be called a new era in the annals of the town of Stirling’. Certainly, the desire to have such a facility in the burgh was long standing. The Stirling School of Arts which was part library, part mechanics institute was formed in 1825 with the intention of building such an establishment. It started out with a small lending library in a rented room in Broad Street in November 1825. Throughout its life, it attracted lecturers of national note. Its annual soirees were demonstrations of intent. In 1854 for example, the need for ‘a lecture room, library and museum, and a public place where interesting specimens of art may be deposited’ was again reiterated and Sir Archibald Alison declared that ‘Stirling will take its place in literature, science and art, which it has long in Scottish history taken in arms’.

title: Cliffe Castle Museum

text: It is believed that Keighley Museum was established in 1892, because that is when its first location, Eastwood House, Keighley, was purchased for the public. In 1950 the local benefactor Sir Bracewell Smith purchased Cliffe Castle, and had it redesigned as a museum and art gallery for the people of Keighley. The museum re-opened as Cliffe Castle Museum and Art Gallery in 1959.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: When the writer and former suffragette Eunice Murray made her impassioned plea for Scottish folk museums, it was in the wake of the Second World War. She saw the establishment of museums as an essential feature of a peaceful and civilised society, and being familiar with Continental folk museums, regretted their absence in Scotland.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: The centre gallery, Gallery 2, was conceived as the watercolour gallery, and was top lit. It is now used for temporary exhibitions. The large gallery, Gallery 3 was the gallery for the oil paintings of the foundation collection and remained so until 1970. It was also top lit. At present, it houses the Stirling Story exhibition. In 1874 both of these galleries were painted dark marone with the coves in green.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: The final area was the General Museum. On the east side of the building with its face to Stirling, it was lit by eight large windows and housed the museum collection. After the difficulties with the building encountered in the 1970s, this area became the storage area, and is no longer accessible to the public.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: According to the Art Journal of 1896 the Smith did “a good work of quiet, unostentatious usefulness”. It has continued to do this and often the public do not recognise the Smith's collections when they see them. They are used to illustrate many promotional brochures for Stirling and Scotland, from simple leaflets to books and the prestigious City Bid document of 2001. Images from the collection are also used in displays in visitor centres, including the Wallace Monument, throughout the area, and in the pages of national newspapers and in history books.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: Working with Stirling High School art master Leonard Baker, Croall mounted an exhibition of contemporary art in 1878. Out of this grew the Stirling Fine Art Association. Croall also established the Stirling Field Club whose members helped build up the collections of the Smith Institute. In the early years the Field Club met in the Smith, and the successes of the museum are recorded in the printed transactions of the society 1878-1938. He was eloquent and inspirational. His paper Weeds – what they are, and what to do with them (November 1883) is a lyrical lecture on the biodiversity of Creation, and typical of his teaching. His daughter Annie Croall (1854–1927) also made a significant contribution in Stirling. After finding a baby abandoned on the Back Walk, she opened a house for homeless women and then the Stirling Children's Home. Her story is recounted in Fifty Years on a Scottish Battlefield 1873-1923.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: In 1970, the Trustees, on the advice of the Keeper of the National Museum of Antiquities, signed over the original Stirling Heads to the Department of Ancient Monuments (now Historic Scotland). It was feared that these important early portraits were in danger because of the condition of the Smith and that they should be returned to their original home, Stirling Castle. (The National Museum trustees have not elected to return the three Stirling heads in their collection to Stirling Castle.) Additional proposals sought from other experts recommended the dispersal of the art collection, and the use of the history collections for exhibitions in various historic buildings in the upper town.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: In 1849 Alexander Smith died and eventually Smith's new inheritance enabled him to create an art collection at a studio in Fitzroy Square that included his own work. He decided to create an Institute in Stirling to house his new collection. He drew up plans for a library, museum and a reading room. He signed the trust into existence in November 1869 with himself, James Barty, the Provost of Stirling, and A. W. Cox, a fellow artist, as trustees. He was prevented however from seeing his plans fulfilled as he died the next month in Avignon.[1]

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: When the Smith site was selected, it was not in an advantageous part of the burgh. 1400 people signed a petition pointing this out. The building was the second to be built on the north side of the Dumbarton Road, in the King's Park, which was under development as an up-market residential area. The King's Park was cut off from the old town by the medieval wall. It remained unconnected until a new vehicular road was driven through at the Corn Exchange when the Carnegie Library was built in 1904. There was no direct road to the Smith. The pathway from the High School of Stirling (now the Stirling Highland Hotel) was created as a main access route to the Smith only after the Institute was opened to the public. The issue of breaching the medieval wall was one which was traditionally opposed by the people of Stirling. Today, these issues would be resolved by public consultation. The autocratic way in which the site was selected and the extinction of the hope for a museum facility in the old town was deeply resented, as shown by the obituary notice in the Stirling Observer which recounted the story of the Stirling School of Art:

title: Hans Meidner

text: He moved to England to lecture at Reading in 1964 before settling in Stirling in Scotland as Professor of Botany at Stirling University. A keen amateur artist he was actively involved with the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: The Constitution of the Stirling Fine Art Association allowed the purchase of works of art to be added to the Smith collections from any surplus funds, after all expenses incurred by the exhibition had been defrayed. Unfortunately, these circumstances rarely occurred.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: John Scott was also personally involved as part of the team constructing the William Wallace exhibition of 1997, the Victorian Stirling exhibition in 1998, and the Stirling Story exhibition in 2000. Each of these was a major production showing different aspects of the Smith's collections.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: The Smith Institute and its grounds were an important part of my childhood. I am delighted that the Smith has been kept open and is now flourishing.

title: Thomas Stuart Smith

text: Smith is known primarily for founding the "Smith Institute," which is now called the Stirling Smith Museum and Art Gallery. Smith also has hundreds of paintings in public ownership.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: Elsewhere in Scotland, museums and galleries were the responsibility of the district councils. In Stirling, the situation with the Smith was so serious, that the regional council was persuaded to enter into the partnership, providing half of the public funding package. The Joint Committee of Stirling District Council and Central Regional Council was the Smith's governing body from 1975 until the disappearance of the Regional Council in 1996, and during those years, it alone of all the Regional Councils in Scotland invested money in a local museum and gallery.

title: Smudge (cat)

text: Smudge left the People's Palace in 1990 with the departure of Elspeth King, the museum's curator. When Elspeth became director of Stirling's Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, Smudge was called on again to deal with a rodent problem. Smudge died at her home in 2000 after a long illness. A plaque is now dedicated to the memory of Sister Smudge at one of the side entrances to the People's Palace.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: Mr Croall set a very high ideal of this place and work in his new sphere of life. He looked upon the Smith Institute as the shrine of art and science in Stirling, and himself as their high priest.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: When the Library moved to the new Carnegie building at the Corn Exchange in 1904, this became the natural history room. The plaster ceiling (by John Craigie of Stirling who had the contract for all the Smith plasterwork) was lost in the dry rot outbreak and removed in 1974. This room, renamed the Ballengeich Room or Gallery 1 was the first area of the Smith to be refurbished (1977). The room is at present used for temporary exhibitions and the Smith Café.

title: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

text: The Stirling Smith has had a chequered history of 130 years which is worth examining in detail. The founder, Thomas Stuart Smith was an artist who wanted the art gallery element of his Institute to predominate.


query: How did Joseph Stalin died?

title: Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin

text: On 5 March 1953, at 21:50 EET, Joseph Stalin, the second leader of the Soviet Union, died at the Kuntsevo Dacha aged 74 after suffering a stroke. After four days of national mourning, Stalin was given a state funeral and then buried in Lenin's Mausoleum on 9 March. Nikita Khrushchev, Georgy Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov and Lavrentiy Beria were in charge of organizing the funeral.

title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: On the night of 9 November 1932, Stalin's wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, shot herself in her bedroom. Stalin was sleeping in another room that night, so her death was not discovered until the next morning. To prevent a scandal, Pravda reported the cause of death as appendicitis. Stalin did not tell his own children the truth to prevent them from spreading the truth accidentally.

title: Joseph Stalin Museum, Gori

text: The Joseph Stalin Museum is a museum in Gori, Georgia dedicated to the life of Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, who was born in Gori. The Museum retains its Soviet-era characteristics.

title: Nanuli Shevardnadze

text: Nanuli's father Razhden Tsagareishvili was purged during Joseph Stalin's rule, while her mother died of tuberculosis, leaving Nanuli and her two siblings orphaned. Shevardnadze, then a Komsomol activist, met her in the last years of Stalin's life and married her in 1951, ignoring warning that it would be fatal to his career to marry a woman whose father was executed as an "enemy of the people". Even Nanuli initially rejected Shevardnadze's marriage proposal, fearing her background would ruin his career, but he did not back down.

title: Central Committee elected by the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

text: In preparation of the 4th Plenary Session, Gorbachev had prepared a speech on Soviet and Party history. In it he condemned the rule of Joseph Stalin and Stalinism in general, but the speech was amended by Politburo. Conservatives such as Ligachev, Andrei Gromyko, Mikhail Solomentsev and Vitaly Vorotnikov did not share Gorbachev's views, or at least, did not support a public anti-Stalinist proclamation. Despite the conservative reaction, Gorbachev was able to rehabilitate Nikolay Bukharin and Nikita Khrushchev, while referring to Stalin's repressive regime as "immense and unpardonable".

title: Joseph Stalin

text: In May 1922, a massive stroke left Lenin partially paralysed. Residing at his Gorki dacha, Lenin's main connection to Sovnarkom was through Stalin, who was a regular visitor. Lenin twice asked Stalin to procure poison so that he could commit suicide, but Stalin never did so. Despite this comradeship, Lenin disliked what he referred to as Stalin's "Asiatic" manner, and told his sister Maria that Stalin was "not intelligent". Lenin and Stalin argued on the issue of foreign trade; Lenin believed that the Soviet state should have a monopoly on foreign trade, but Stalin supported Grigori Sokolnikov's view that doing so was impractical at that stage. Another disagreement came over the Georgian Affair, with Lenin backing the Georgian Central Committee's desire for a Georgian Soviet Republic over Stalin's idea of a Transcaucasian one.

title: Purim

text: There is a tale in the Hasidic Chabad movement that supposedly Joseph Stalin died as a result of some metaphysical intervention of the seventh Chabad leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, during the recitation of a discourse at a public Purim Farbrengen. Stalin was suddenly paralyzed on 1 March 1953, which corresponds to Purim 1953, and died 4 days later. Due to Stalin's death, nationwide pogroms against Jews throughout the Soviet Union were averted, as Stalin's infamous doctors' plot was halted.

title: Eastern Bloc media and propaganda

text: Beginning in 1935, Joseph Stalin effectively sealed off outside access to the Soviet Socialist Republics (and until his death), effectively permitting no foreign travel inside the Soviet Union such that outsiders did not know of the political processes that had taken place therein. During this period, and even for 25 years after Stalin's death, the few diplomats and foreign correspondents that were permitted inside the Soviet Union were usually restricted to within a few miles of Moscow, their phones were tapped, their residences were restricted to foreigner-only locations and they were constantly followed by Soviet authorities. Dissenters who approached such foreigners were arrested. For many years after World War II, even the best informed foreigners did not know the number of arrest or executed Soviet citizens, or how poorly the Soviet economy had performed.

title: Rzhev

text: There is a local museum in Rzhev. As a highly controversial move, in 2013 the Joseph Stalin Museum was opened in a building where Joseph Stalin had spent one night in 1943 while inspecting the troops. , the museum did not have regular opening hours and was only open by appointment, trying to keep a low profile.

title: W. E. B. Du Bois

text: In 1950, at the age of 82, Du Bois ran for U.S. Senator from New York on the American Labor Party ticket and received about 200,000 votes, or 4% of the statewide total. Du Bois continued to believe that capitalism was the primary culprit responsible for the subjugation of colored people around the world, and therefore – although he recognized the faults of the Soviet Union – he continued to uphold communism as a possible solution to racial problems. In the words of biographer David Lewis, Du Bois did not endorse communism for its own sake, but did so because "the enemies of his enemies were his friends". The same ambiguity characterized Du Bois's opinions of Joseph Stalin: in 1940 he wrote disdainfully of the "Tyrant Stalin", but when Stalin died in 1953, Du Bois wrote a eulogy characterizing Stalin as "simple, calm, and courageous", and lauding him for being the "first [to] set Russia on the road to conquer race prejudice and make one nation out of its 140 groups without destroying their individuality".

title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: Lenin died on 21 January 1924. Stalin was given the honour of organizing his funeral. Upon Lenin's death, Stalin was officially hailed as his successor as the leader of the ruling Communist Party and of the Soviet Union itself. Against Lenin's wishes, he was given a lavish funeral and his body was embalmed and put on display. Thanks to Kamenev and Zinoviev's influence, the Central Committee decided that Lenin's Testament should not be made public. At the Thirteenth Party Congress in May 1924, it was read out only to the heads of the provincial delegations. Trotsky did not want to appear divisive so soon after Lenin's death and did not seize the opportunity to demand Stalin's removal.

title: Stalin and antisemitism

text: The question of how antisemitic Joseph Stalin was is widely discussed by historians. At the same time, instances of antisemitism on Stalin's part have been witnessed by contemporaries and documented by historical sources.

title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: On 25 May 1922, Lenin suffered a stroke while recovering from surgery to remove a bullet lodged in his neck since a failed assassination attempt in August 1918. Severely debilitated, he went into semi-retirement and moved to his dacha in Gorki. After this, prominent Bolsheviks were concerned about who would take over if Lenin actually died. Lenin and Trotsky had more of a personal and theoretical relationship, while Lenin and Stalin had more of a political and apparatical relationship. Yet, Stalin visited Lenin often, acting as his intermediary with the outside world. During this time, the two quarrelled over economic policy and how to consolidate the Soviet republics. One day, Stalin verbally swore at Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, for breaching Politburo orders by helping Lenin communicate with Trotsky and others about politics; this greatly offended Lenin. As their relationship deteriorated, Lenin dictated increasingly disparaging notes on Stalin in what would become his testament. Lenin criticised Stalin's rude manners, excessive power, ambition and politics, and suggested that Stalin should be removed from the position of General Secretary. One of Lenin's secretaries showed Stalin the notes, whose contents shocked him. On 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered his most debilitating stroke, which ended his political career.

title: Joseph Alliluyev

text: The son of Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, Iosif was seven years old when Stalin, his mother's father and his famous grandfather, died in March 1953. Although he kept a low profile, he did take part in a television interview on Russian Channel One. He spoke about his relationship with his mother and how she fled to the United States.

title: Classicide

text: In 1929, at the beginning of his dictatorship, Joseph Stalin demanded the "liquidation of kulak's as a class". The Kulaks were peasants who were deemed "wealthy" by Stalin in 1929. The idea for dekulakization first arose in 1918 from Vladamir Lenin, who claimed that the Kulak's were "freeloaders". The oppression of kulaks didn't end until 1932, throughout this time Kulak's were being evicted from their homes, having their land confiscated, shot, imprisoned, deported, or being sent to local work camps. Although the term classicide was never formally used to describe Stalin's destruction of the kulaks, Stalin did say that they had "... gone over from a policy of limiting the exploiting tendencies of the kulak to a policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class." During the punishment of the kulaks under Stalin's leadership an estimated 14.5 million peasants died from starvation or punishment.

title: Poltava Air Base

text: Difficulties for the US forces began almost immediately with a good example being how Joseph Stalin promised US military leaders that the Soviets would handle all air base defenses. Stalin's idea of airbase defense consisted of truck mounted .50 caliber machine guns. Stalin's airbase defense strategy proved entirely inneffective on the June 21st night when the Luftwaffe attack of the base was an entire success, as not one single Luftwaffe plane attacking the base was shot down by the .50 cal truck mounted machine guns supplied by Stalin for defense.

title: Conspiracy theories about Adolf Hitler's death

text: The theory that Hitler did not commit suicide, but instead escaped with his wife, was promoted by the Soviet government as part of its state-sponsored disinformation campaign. The myth was first presented to the public by Marshall Georgy Zhukov at a press conference on 9 June 1945, on orders from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. When asked at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945 how Hitler had died, Stalin said he was living "in Spain or Argentina." This has been a springboard for various conspiracy theories, despite the official conclusion by Western powers, and the consensus of historians, that Hitler killed himself on 30 April 1945.

title: George F. Kennan

text: Soviet international behavior depended mainly on the internal necessities of Joseph Stalin's regime; according to Kennan, Stalin needed a hostile world in order to legitimize his autocratic rule. Stalin thus used Marxism-Leninism as a "justification for the Soviet Union's instinctive fear of the outside world, for the dictatorship without which they did not know how to rule, for cruelties they did not dare not to inflict, for sacrifice they felt bound to demand  ... Today they cannot dispense with it. It is the fig leaf of their moral and intellectual respectability".

title: Miron Merzhanov

text: In summer of 1933 he was summoned to design a single-story residence in Kuntsevo that became Joseph Stalin's Kuntsevo Dacha () and where the dictator died in 1953. Merzhanov met Stalin in person later, in 1934, when the architect received another commission for a large summer house in Matsesta on the Black Sea. Stalin made a peculiar request - "no fountains"; Merzhanov, however, squeezed in a natural-looking pool. More dachas for Stalin and top statesmen were built to Merzhanov's design in Gagra and Sochi area in 1935-1937. This time, according to Merzhanov, Stalin did not issue any direct advice, fully relying on the architect. Their relationships remained strictly official, never crossing the line of subordination.

title: Joseph Bailly Homestead

text: Joseph Bailly acquired the Homestead and surrounding lands during the 1830s when the Calumet was opened to white settlement. When he died in 1835, the Homestead went to his wife. At her death in 1866, it went to their daughter Rose Bailly Howe. Rose Howe's daughter Frances inherited the property in 1891 when Rose died. Frances offered the property to the Literary Society of St. Catherine of Sienna in 1914. The Society did not accept the gift.

title: C.-H. Hermansson

text: At the time of Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, Hermansson praised Stalin as a brilliant scientist and a great leader. He subsequently regretted this and referred to his own words about Stalin as reprehensible. Hermansson died on 26 July 2016 at the age of 98.

title: Korean War

text: To enlist Stalin's support, Zhou and a Chinese delegation arrived in Moscow on 10 October, at which point they flew to Stalin's home at the Black Sea. There they conferred with the top Soviet leadership, which included Joseph Stalin as well as Vyacheslav Molotov, Lavrentiy Beria and Georgi Malenkov. Stalin initially agreed to send military equipment and ammunition, but warned Zhou that the Soviet Union's air force would need two or three months to prepare any operations. In a subsequent meeting, Stalin told Zhou that he would only provide China with equipment on a credit basis, and that the Soviet air force would only operate over Chinese airspace, and only after an undisclosed period of time. Stalin did not agree to send either military equipment or air support until March 1951. Mao did not find Soviet air support especially useful, as the fighting was going to take place on the south side of the Yalu. Soviet shipments of matériel, when they did arrive, were limited to small quantities of trucks, grenades, machine guns, and the like.

title: Stalin's cult of personality

text: Joseph Stalin's cult of personality became a prominent part of Soviet culture in December 1929, after a lavish celebration for Stalin's 50th birthday. For the rest of Stalin's rule, the Soviet press presented Stalin as an all-powerful, all-knowing leader, and Stalin's name and image became omnipresent. From 1936 the Soviet journalism started to refer to Joseph Stalin as the "Father of Nations".

title: Foreign interventions by China

title: Political decoy

text: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin is alleged to have had a double, identified only as "Rashid". Officials at the KGB allegedly learned that Rashid was a "double" for Stalin and employed him to replace Stalin for some public functions after World War II. Rashid spent two years studying with Alexei Dikiy, an actor who played the role of Stalin in propaganda films. Rashid claimed there were other Stalin lookalikes employed by the KGB, although he never met any. He claimed to have heard of another Stalin double who was hired to live in the leader's dacha outside of Moscow in the late 1940s and 1950s when Stalin was dying. This double filled in for Stalin for media events and at times when Stalin had to meet government functionaries and others. Rashid died in 1991, aged 93.

title: Collectivization in the Soviet Union

text: During the Famine of 1932-33 it's estimated that 7.8-11 million people died from starvation. The implication is that the total death toll (both direct and indirect) for Stalin's collectivization program was on the order of 12 million people. It is said that in 1945, Joseph Stalin confided to Winston Churchill at Yalta that 10 million people died in the course of collectivization.

title: Stalin's Funeral

text: 1953, USSR. Moscow bids farewell to Joseph Stalin. In the funeral crowd, Zhenya gets acquainted with Eli. Over the long hours spent in the funeral procession, they had time to learn a lot about each other, but Elya absurdly dies. So Zhenya begins another, adult, life.Yevtushenko's was more critical of Joseph Stalin's crimes by the time of production and he also sought to emphasise his generation's rejection of Stalinism; "If one is to speak about Stalinism, then we are still digging down to the roots of the poisonous tree of totalitarianism, of which Stalin was the gardener. But this film is not about the roots and not about the gardener but rather about the green shoots sprouting in the evil shade of that tree and yet straining toward the light - about our generation."

title: M. K. Stalin

text: M. K. Stalin was born in Madras, now Chennai, on 1 March 1953. He was named after Joseph Stalin, who died four days later. He studied in the Madras Christian College Higher Secondary School His political career began when, as a 14 year old, he campaigned in the 1967 elections. In 1973, Stalin was elected to the General committee of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).

title: Early life of Joseph Stalin

text: In January 1913, Stalin travelled to Vienna, where he stayed with the wealthy Bolshevik sympathiser Alexander Troyanovsky. He was in the city at the same time as Adolf Hitler and Josip Broz Tito, although did not meet either of them at the time. There, he devoted himself to examining the 'national question' of how the Bolsheviks should deal with the various national and ethnic minorities living in the Russian Empire. Lenin had wanted to attract these minorities to the Bolshevik cause and to offer them the right of succession from the Russian state; at the same time, he hoped that they would not take up this offer and would want to remain part of a future Bolshevik-governed Russia. Stalin had not been able to read German, but had been assisted in studying German texts by writers like Karl Kautsky and Otto Bauer by fellow Bolshevik Nikolai Bukharin. He finished the article, which was titled "Marxism and the National Question". Lenin was very happy with it, and in a private letter to Maxim Gorky he referred to Stalin as the "wonderful Georgian". According to Montefiore, this was "Stalin's most famous work".

title: John Howe (loyalist)

text: After his retirement from his offices of King's Printer and Postmaster, John Howe continued to be active, serving as a magistrate. In 1822, Sarah Foster Howe, John's seventh child, married Daniel Langshaw, but in 1824, Sarah Foster (Howe) Langshaw died aboard ship on her way from Liverpool, England, to Lima, Peru, where she was planning to move with her husband. In 1826, John Howe's sixth child, David Howe, also died. But another family event followed on February 2, 1828, when Joseph Howe, John Howe's youngest child, married Catherine Susan Ann McNab. After this marriage, John Howe helped to produce his son's, Joseph Howe's, newspaper together with Joseph's wife, particularly when Joseph traveled.


query: What is atomic mass?

title: Atomic mass

text: The atomic mass (ma) is the mass of an atom. Its unit is the unified atomic mass units (abbr. u) where 1 unified atomic mass unit is defined as 1⁄12 of the mass of a single carbon-12 atom, at rest.[1] For atoms, the protons and neutrons of the nucleus account for nearly all of the total mass, and the atomic mass measured in u has nearly the same value as the mass number.

title: Atomic mass unit

text: The standard atomic weight (or atomic weight) scale has traditionally been a relative value, that is without a unit, with the first relative atomic mass basis suggested by John Dalton in 1803 as H. Despite the initial mass of H being used as the natural unit for relative atomic mass, it was suggested by Wilhelm Ostwald that relative atomic mass would be best expressed in terms of units of mass of oxygen (). This evaluation was made prior to the discovery of the existence of elemental isotopes, which occurred in 1912.

title: Atomic mass

text: The atomic mass or relative isotopic mass refers to the mass of a single particle, and therefore is tied to a certain specific isotope of an element. The dimensionless standard atomic weight instead refers to the average (mathematical mean) of atomic mass values of a typical naturally-occurring mixture of isotopes for a sample of an element. Atomic mass values are thus commonly reported to many more significant figures than atomic weights. Standard atomic weight is related to atomic mass by the abundance ranking of isotopes for each element. It is usually about the same value as the atomic mass of the most abundant isotope, other than what looks like (but is not actually) a rounding difference.

title: Relative atomic mass

text: It is a synonym for atomic weight, though it is not to be confused with relative isotopic mass. Relative atomic mass is also frequently used as a synonym for "standard" atomic weight and these quantities may have overlapping values if the relative atomic mass used is that for an element from Earth under defined conditions. However, relative atomic mass (atomic weight) is still technically distinct from standard atomic weight because of its application only to the atoms obtained from a single sample; it is also not restricted to terrestrial samples, whereas standard atomic weight averages multiple samples but only from terrestrial sources. Relative atomic mass is therefore a more general term that can more broadly refer to samples taken from non-terrestrial environments or highly specific terrestrial environments which may differ substantially from Earth-average or reflect different degrees of certainty (e.g. in number of significant figures) than those reflected in standard atomic weights.

title: Atomic mass constant

text:
In practice, the atomic mass constant is determined as the ratio of the electron rest mass "m" to the electron relative atomic mass "A"(e) (that is, the mass of the electron on a scale where C = 12). The relative atomic mass of the electron can be measured in cyclotron experiments, while the rest mass of the electron can be derived from other physical constants.
The current uncertainty in the value of the atomic mass constant – one part in 20 million – is almost entirely due to the uncertainty in the value of the Planck constant.

title: Atomic mass

text: Any mass defect due to nuclear binding energy is experimentally a small fraction (less than 1%) of the mass of equal number of free nucleons. When compared to the average mass per nucleon in carbon-12, which is moderately strongly-bound compared with other atoms, the mass defect of binding for most atoms is an even smaller fraction of a dalton (unified atomic mass unit, based on carbon-12). Since free protons and neutrons differ from each other in mass by a small fraction of a dalton (about 0.0014 u), rounding the relative isotopic mass, or the atomic mass of any given nuclide given in daltons to the nearest whole number always gives the nucleon count, or mass number. Additionally, the neutron count (neutron number) may then be derived by subtracting the number of protons (atomic number) from the mass number (nucleon count).

title: Atomic number

text: The sum of the atomic number "Z" and the number of neutrons, "N", gives the mass number "A" of an atom. Since protons and neutrons have approximately the same mass (and the mass of the electrons is negligible for many purposes) and the mass defect of nucleon binding is always small compared to the nucleon mass, the atomic mass of any atom, when expressed in unified atomic mass units (making a quantity called the "relative isotopic mass"), is within 1% of the whole number "A".

title: Atomic mass

text: The term atomic weight is being phased out slowly and being replaced by relative atomic mass, in most current usage. This shift in nomenclature reaches back to the 1960s and has been the source of much debate in the scientific community, which was triggered by the adoption of the unified atomic mass unit and the realization that weight was in some ways an inappropriate term. The argument for keeping the term "atomic weight" was primarily that it was a well understood term to those in the field, that the term "atomic mass" was already in use (as it is currently defined) and that the term "relative atomic mass" might be easily confused with relative isotopic mass (the mass of a single atom of a given nuclide, expressed dimensionlessly relative to 1/12 of the mass of carbon-12; see section above).

title: Atomic mass unit

text: The unified atomic mass unit or dalton (symbol: u, or Da or AMU) is a standard unit of mass that quantifies mass on an atomic or molecular scale (atomic mass). One unified atomic mass unit is approximately the mass of one nucleon (either a single proton or neutron) and is numerically equivalent to 1g/mol. It is defined as one twelfth of the mass of an unbound neutral atom of carbon-12 in its nuclear and electronic ground state and at rest, and has a value of , or approximately 1.66 yoctograms. The CIPM has categorised it as a non-SI unit accepted for use with the SI, and whose value in SI units must be obtained experimentally.

title: Atomic mass

text: Relative isotopic mass is similar to atomic mass and has exactly the same numerical value as atomic mass, whenever atomic mass is expressed in unified atomic mass units. The only difference in that case, is that relative isotopic mass is a pure number with no units. This loss of units results from the use of a scaling ratio with respect to a carbon-12 standard, and the word "relative" in the term "relative isotopic mass" refers to this scaling relative to carbon-12.

title: Mass number

text: The mass number (symbol "A", from the German word "Atomgewicht" (atomic weight), 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 determines the atomic mass of atoms. Because protons and neutrons both are baryons, the mass number A is identical with the baryon number B as of the nucleus as of the whole atom or ion. The mass number is different for each different isotope of a chemical element. This is not the same as the atomic number ("Z") which denotes the number of protons in a nucleus, and thus uniquely identifies an element. Hence, the difference between the mass number and the atomic number gives the number of neutrons ("N") in a given nucleus: .

title: Atom

text: The actual mass of an atom at rest is often expressed using the unified atomic mass unit (u), also called dalton (Da). This unit is defined as a twelfth of the mass of a free neutral atom of carbon-12, which is approximately . Hydrogen-1 (the lightest isotope of hydrogen which is also the nuclide with the lowest mass) has an atomic weight of 1.007825 u. The value of this number is called the atomic mass. A given atom has an atomic mass approximately equal (within 1%) to its mass number times the atomic mass unit (for example the mass of a nitrogen-14 is roughly 14 u). However, this number will not be exactly an integer except in the case of carbon-12 (see below). The heaviest stable atom is lead-208, with a mass of .

title: Atomic mass

text: For example, the relative isotopic mass of a carbon-12 atom is exactly 12. For comparison, the atomic mass of a carbon-12 atom is exactly 12 daltons or 12 unified atomic mass units. Alternately, the atomic mass of a carbon-12 atom may be expressed in any other mass units: for example, the atomic mass of a carbon-12 atom is about 1.998467052 × 10−26 kilograms.

title: Relative atomic mass

text: Relative atomic mass is determined by the "average atomic mass", or the weighted mean of the atomic masses of all the atoms of a particular chemical element found in a particular sample, which is then compared to the atomic mass of carbon-12. This comparison is the quotient of the two weights, which makes the value dimensionless (no unit appended). This quotient also explains the word "relative": the sample mass value is considered relative to that of carbon-12..

title: Mass (mass spectrometry)

text: The unified atomic mass unit (symbol: u) is the standard unit that is used for indicating mass on an atomic or molecular scale (atomic mass). The dalton (symbol: Da) is equivalent to the unified atomic mass unit. One unified atomic mass unit is approximately the mass of one a single proton or neutron. The unified atomic mass unit has a value of . The "amu" without the "unified" prefix is an obsolete unit based on oxygen, which was replaced in 1961.

title: Atomic mass

text: The atomic mass and relative isotopic mass are sometimes confused, or incorrectly used, as synonyms of standard atomic weight (also known as atomic weight) and the standard atomic weight (a particular variety of atomic weight, in the sense that is a standardized atomic weight). However, as noted in the introduction, atomic weight and standard atomic weight represent terms for (abundance-weighted) averages of atomic masses in elemental samples, not for single nuclides. As such, atomic weight and standard atomic weight often differ numerically from relative isotopic mass and atomic mass, and they can also have different units than atomic mass when this quantity is not expressed in unified atomic mass units (see the linked article for atomic weight).

title: Atomic mass

text: When divided by unified atomic mass units, or daltons (abbr. Da), to form a pure numeric ratio, the atomic mass of an atom becomes a dimensionless value called the relative isotopic mass (see section below). Thus, the atomic mass of a carbon-12 atom is 12u (or 12Da), but the relative isotopic mass of a carbon-12 atom is simply 12.

title: Atomic mass

text: The atomic mass (relative isotopic mass) is defined as the mass of a single atom, which can only be one isotope (nuclide) at a time, and is not an abundance-weighted average, as in the case of relative atomic mass/atomic weight. The atomic mass or relative isotopic mass of each isotope and nuclide of a chemical element is therefore a number that can in principle be measured to a very great precision, since every specimen of such a nuclide is expected to be exactly identical to every other specimen, as all atoms of a given type in the same energy state, and every specimen of a particular nuclide, are expected to be exactly identical in mass to every other specimen of that nuclide. For example, every atom of oxygen-16 is expected to have exactly the same atomic mass (relative isotopic mass) as every other atom of oxygen-16.

title: Atomic spectroscopy

text: Atomic mass spectrometry is similar to other types of mass spectrometry in that it consists of an ion source, a mass analyzer, and a detector. Atoms' identities are determined by their mass-to-charge ratio (via the mass analyzer) and their concentrations are determined by the number of ions detected. Although considerable research has gone into customizing mass spectrometers for atomic ion sources, it is the ion source that differs most from other forms of mass spectrometry. These ion sources must also atomize samples, or an atomization step must take place before ionization. Atomic ion sources are generally modifications of atomic optical spectroscopy atom sources.

title: Relative atomic mass

text: Relative atomic mass (symbol: "A") or atomic weight is a dimensionless physical quantity defined as the ratio of the average mass of atoms of a chemical element in a given sample to one unified atomic mass unit. The unified atomic mass unit (symbol: "u" or "Da") is defined as being of the atomic mass of a carbon-12 atom. Since both values in the ratio are expressed in the same unit ("u"), the resulting value is dimensionless; hence the value is said to be "relative".

title: Prout's hypothesis

text: Although all elements are the product of nuclear fusion of hydrogen into higher elements, it is now understood that atoms consist of both protons (hydrogen nuclei) and neutrons. The modern version of Prout's rule is that the atomic mass of an isotope of proton number (atomic number) "Z" and neutron number "N" is equal to sum of the masses of its constituent protons and neutrons, minus the mass of the nuclear binding energy, the mass defect. According to the whole number rule proposed by Francis Aston, the mass of an isotope is roughly, but not exactly, its mass number "A" = "Z" + "N" times an atomic mass unit (u), plus or minus binding energy discrepancy – atomic mass unit being the modern approximation for "mass of a proton, neutron, or hydrogen atom". For example iron-56 atoms (which have among the highest binding-energies) weigh only about 99.1% as much as 56 hydrogen atoms. The missing 0.9% of mass represents the energy lost when the nucleus of iron was made from hydrogen inside a star. (See stellar nucleosynthesis).

title: Atomic mass constant

text:
The atomic mass constant can also be expressed as its energy equivalent, that is "m""c". The 2010 CODATA recommended values are:
The megaelectronvolt (MeV) is commonly used as a unit of mass in particle physics, and these values are also important for the practical determination of relative atomic masses. Although relative atomic masses are defined for neutral atoms, they are measured (by mass spectrometry) for ions: hence, the measured values must be correct for the mass of the electrons that were removed to form the ions, and also for the mass equivalent of the electron binding energy, "E"/"m""c". The total binding energy of the six electrons in a carbon-12 atom is 1030.1089 eV = : "E"/"m""c" = , or about one part in 10 million of the mass of the atom.

title: Mass number

text: The mass number should also not be confused with the standard atomic weight (also called atomic weight) of an element, which is the ratio of the average atomic mass of the different isotopes of that element (weighted by abundance) to the unified atomic mass unit. The atomic weight is an actual "mass" (made relative, i.e., a ratio), while the mass number is a "counted" number (and so an integer).

title: Atomic mass

text: One mole of a substance always contains almost exactly the standard atomic weight or molar mass of that substance; however, this may or may not be true for the atomic mass, depending on whether or not the element exists naturally in more than one isotope. For example, the standard atomic weight of iron is 55.847 g/mol, and therefore one mole of iron as commonly found on earth has a mass of 55.847grams. The atomic mass of the 56Fe isotope is 55.935 u and one mole of 56Fe atoms would then in theory have a mass of 55.935 g, but such amounts of pure 56Fe have never been found (or separated out) on Earth. However, there are 22 mononuclidic elements of which essentially only a single isotope is found in nature (common examples are fluorine, sodium, aluminum and phosphorus) and for these elements the standard atomic weight and atomic mass are the same. Samples of these elements therefore may serve as reference standards for certain atomic mass values.

title: Chemical element

text: Whereas the mass number simply counts the total number of neutrons and protons and is thus a natural (or whole) number, the atomic mass of a single atom is a real number giving the mass of a particular isotope (or "nuclide") of the element, expressed in atomic mass units (symbol: u). In general, the mass number of a given nuclide differs in value slightly from its atomic mass, since the mass of each proton and neutron is not exactly 1 u; since the electrons contribute a lesser share to the atomic mass as neutron number exceeds proton number; and (finally) because of the nuclear binding energy. For example, the atomic mass of chlorine-35 to five significant digits is 34.969 u and that of chlorine-37 is 36.966 u. However, the atomic mass in u of each isotope is quite close to its simple mass number (always within 1%). The only isotope whose atomic mass is exactly a natural number is C, which by definition has a mass of exactly 12 because u is defined as 1/12 of the mass of a free neutral carbon-12 atom in the ground state.

title: Molecular mass

text:
Both atomic and molecular masses are usually obtained relative to the mass of the isotope C (carbon 12), which by definition is equal to 12. For example, the molecular mass of methane, whose molecular formula is CH, is calculated as follows:
A more proper term would be "relative molecular mass". However the adjective 'relative' is omitted as it is universally assumed that atomic and molecular masses are relative to the mass of C. Relative atomic and molecular mass values are dimensionless but are given the "unit" Dalton (formerly atomic mass unit) to indicate that the number is equal to the mass of one molecule divided by of the mass of one atom of C. The mass of 1 mol of substance is designated as molar mass. By definition, it has the unit gram.

title: Electron rest mass

text:
The electron relative atomic mass also enters into the calculation of all other relative atomic masses. By convention, relative atomic masses are quoted for neutral atoms, but the actual measurements are made on positive ions, either in a mass spectrometer or a Penning trap. Hence the mass of the electrons must be added back on to the measured values before tabulation. A correction must also be made for the mass equivalent of the binding energy "E". Taking the simplest case of complete ionization of all electrons, for a nuclide X of atomic number "Z",
As relative atomic masses are measured as ratios of masses, the corrections must be applied to both ions: the uncertainties in the corrections are negligible, as illustrated below for hydrogen 1 and oxygen 16.

title: Relative atomic mass

text: Additionally, the continued use of the term "atomic weight" (for any element) as opposed to "relative atomic mass" has attracted considerable controversy since at least the 1960s, mainly due to the technical difference between weight and mass in physics. Still, both terms are officially sanctioned by the IUPAC. The term "relative atomic mass" now seems to be replacing "atomic weight" as the preferred term, although the term ""standard" atomic weight" (as opposed to the more correct ""standard" relative atomic mass") continues to be used.

title: Atomic mass

text: For non-mononuclidic elements that have more than one common isotope, the numerical difference in relative atomic mass (atomic weight) from even the most common relative isotopic mass, can be half a mass unit or more (e.g. see the case of chlorine where atomic weight and standard atomic weight are about 35.45). The atomic mass (relative isotopic mass) of an uncommon isotope can differ from the relative atomic mass, atomic weight, or standard atomic weight, by several mass units.

title: Relative atomic mass

text: Atomic mass ("m") is the mass of a single atom, with unit "Da" or "u" (the unified atomic mass unit). It defines the mass of a specific isotope, which is an input value for the determination of the relative atomic mass. An example for three silicon isotopes is given below.