Question

The atomic weight of boron is reported as 10.81, yet no atom of boron has the mass of 10.81 amu. explain

Answer 1

Boron has a lot of different isotopes, most of which having a very short half life (ranging from 770 milliseconds for Boron-8 down to 150 yoctoseconds for boron-7). But the two isotopes Boron-10 and Boron-11 are stable with about 80.1% of the naturally occurring boron being boron-11 and the remaining 19.9% being boron-10. The weighted average weight of those 2 isotopes has the value of 10.81. The reason they use the average mass of an element for it's atomic weight is because elements in nature are rarely single isotopes. The weighted average allows us to easily compare relative number of atoms of one element against relative numbers of atoms of another element assuming that the experimenters are getting isotope ratios close to their natural ratios.