Happy Mole Day!

Yes, Happy Mole Day! Today is mole day! No, we're not talking about the little animals that make holes in the earth. Neither are we talking about the little brown spots people get on their skin. This is a different kind of mole.

Mole day is a holiday celebrated among chemists in North America on October 23rd from 6:02 a.m. to 6:02 p.m.

Ironically, I was learning about moles in my chemistry on Mole Day! I was reading how chemists wanted to make a national holiday called Mole Day and how Mole Day is on October 23rd. Then I was like....wait....it is October 23rd today! Today is Mole Day!

So you may be wondering what a mole is right? Well a mole is a group of atoms or molecules numbering 6.02 x 10^23. In other words a group of 602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms or molecules.

A mole is like a word representing a number...kinda like dozen, couple, and pair. Except this words represents a big number.

So why is 6.02 x 10^23 such an important number? Why is there a holiday for it? Well, this number was a big break through for chemists. An Italian scientist named Amedeo Avogadro discovered it. That's why it is often called Avogadro's number.

An atoms mass in amu (atomic mass units) can tell you how many grams it takes to have one mole of atoms. All we need to know is the amu of that atom.

For example, we want to know how many moles of fluorine atoms exist in a 50 gram sample of flourine. So knowing that a flourine's mass is 19.0 amu we can then multiply 50 grams of flourine by 1 mole and divide that by 19 grams of flourine. Our answer comes simply there are 2.63 moles of fluorine atoms in a 50.0 gram sample of flourine.

In the same way, a molecule's mass in amu tells you how many grams it takes to have one mole of the molecules.

So you see, the mole is a very important discovery. It is very interesting and amazing to think that 18.0 grams of H2O (water), 58.5 grams of NaCl (salt), and 4.0 grams of He (Helium) all individually equal one mole! It depends on each particular atom's amu to determine how many grams is in a mole.

So why does the celebration of Mole Day start at 6:02 a.m. and end at 6:02 pm? Well....one mole equals 6.02 x 10^23 atoms or molecules so I guess that's where they got the starting time of the celebration.

So anyway, Happy Mole Day to everyone!