Does a proton have a lot of mass?

Answer 1

It depends on what you compare them to, what atom you choose to measure, and how many you are talking about.

A single atom of hydrogen, H, has a mass so tiny you would never be able to directly measure it. Atoms are so small, in fact, that the only way we can measure their masses is by measuring large amounts of them, which we call a "mole" of atoms.

One mole is about 602,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms--you can see that this is a VERY large number! We've measured that this many Hydrogen atoms weighs about 1.008 grams, and it takes about 454 grams to make one pound. So you can see that atoms are very, very small and they do not have a lot of mass. Atoms of other elements have different masses, such as Oxygen, which weighs about 16 times as much as Hydrogen, and heavy elements such as Uranium can weigh over 100 times more than Hydrogen.

Answer 2

Whether you consider it "a lot" or not depends what you compare it with. Compared to our everyday experience, the proton's mass, which is about 1.673×10−27 kg, is indeed quite small. The smallest speck of dust that you can see with the naked eye has billions or triillions of atoms, and each of them has one or several protons.