Atomic mass
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.
Atomic mass unit
One consequence of this change is that the current defined relationship between the mass of the C atom, the dalton, the kilogram, and the Avogadro number will no longer be valid. One of the following must change:
The wording of the ninth SI Brochure implies that the first statement remains valid, which means that the second is no longer true. The molar mass constant, while still with great accuracy remaining 1 g/mol, is no longer exactly equal to that.
Given that the unified atomic mass unit is one twelfth the mass of one atom of carbon-12, meaning the mass of such an atom is 12 u, it follows that there are only approximately "N" atoms of carbon-12 in 0.012 kg of carbon-12. This can be expressed mathematically as