Saturday, December 24, 2011

Define "mole."

A Mole is merely a number.  It's a number, by definition,
that contains 6.02 x 10^23 things.  So, instead of saying we have a billion of something
or ten billion, or a sextillion of something, we say we have a Mole, or 6 followed by 23
zeros.


This is a fantastically large number, but atoms and
molecules are fantastically small, so the Mole is a convenient unit of counting
particles.  By definition, a Mole of a gas will occupy exactly 22.4 liters.  Moles are
also used in calculating the molecular weight of a given quantity of a substance.  By
knowing the weight, we can calculate the number of particles.

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