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Reasons why hydrogen was chosen as a standard reference to other elements

User Kaushalya
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Answer:

See below

Step-by-step explanation:

  • Hydrogen either reacts with or is formed by reactions with many other elements, so chemists could use it directly to determine their relative masses.
  • Hydrogen has the smallest atomic mass, so it was convenient to give H a relative atomic mass of 1 and assign those of other elements as multiples of this number.

The O = 16 scale became the standard in 1903 and carbon-12 was chosen in 1961.

User Sergei Kuzmin
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