Atomic mass
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).
Atomic mass constant
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.