Yo! Avogadro fans!
Today is our day!
I’m a little late getting this post up, as Mole Day ends at 6:02 p.m
Remember: that equal number of molecules of a gas occupy equal volumes under the same temperature and pressure is not just a good idea.
…for which insight Amadeo Avogadro received the honor of having his name attached to the number of molecules that make up one mole of a substance, a number set by convention as the number of carbon 12 atoms that add up to 12 grams of the substance. That number: 6.02*10^23. Hence, Mole Day, running from 6:02 a.m. to 6:02 p.m on 10/23.
In Avogadro’s honor, a tune:
–
Geek out, my friends, and discuss whatever amongst yourselves.
gene108
So the rest of the world that uses a DD/MM/YYYY format are left without the ability to honor Mr. Avodagro today.
USA! USA! USA!
Gin & Tonic
@gene108: But can you think of another place on the intertubes where Amadeo Avogadro meets Freddy Mercury?
Mike J
@gene108: ISO 8601 is YYYY-MM-DD It’s the easiest format to sort on. For the sake of convenience, and for things that recur every year, we often drop the YYYY,
Sad_Dem
The Freedom Caucus has pledged to repeal Avogadro’s law as furrin sounding and against constitutional principles.
Mary G
I remember not understanding that very well in organic chemistry class, and I still don’t, really.
gene108
The post also makes me sad, because it reminds me I have forgotten so much science I once knew.
RSA
To celebrate, I’m going out for Mexican.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Mike J:
As a programmer who worked on mainframe Y2K remediation I will write dates as YYYYMMDD for he rest of my life, without fail.
And nothing can make me stop.
Roger Moore
@Mike J:
It can also be easily extended to include HH:MM:SS, which lets you sort further in strict chronological order. That’s the advantage of being big-endian.
ETA: I think that a number of Asian countries use the ISO 8601 dates as their standard rather than DD/MM/YYYY (or DD-MMM-YYYY, with the month written as a three letter abbreviation, which is also common).
Soonergrunt
And just when I thought there wouldn’t be anything interesting to talk about today…
gene108
@gene108:
I read on Wikipedia that they have Mol Day on 6 February, i.e. 06.02
Brachiator
Wait, Mole and Avogadro??
Not Mole and Avocado?
So, this is the secret behind the Beatles song, You know my name, look up the Avogadro number
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DkaRUtp3w8
rea
I love chicken mole, if that’s relevant.
Roger Moore
@RSA:
Just remember, if you want to get a lot of micromoles, you have to squeeze a lot of Avogadros.
Southern Beale
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS POST EVEN ABOUT I HAVE NO CLUE
Not That Guy
We had an application that created lots of files, and the creation date was part of the file name, as a convenience to the users (there were a lot of files). The client made us change the naming of files to be MM/DD/YYYY. When we pointed out that this would cause them to sort in strange and annoying ways, he said “I don’t care. This is America, and that’s how we write dates.”
Probably a Republican.
Roger Moore
@Not That Guy:
Did you point out that many operating systems use / as a directory separator?
Tommy
Had to search what Mole Day was:
Made me think a little. Why I like to come here. I did not know this. I feel a little better I do.
jl
@Southern Beale: This post is about the fact that Sanders should demand a day in front of the Benghazi committee so he can get equal time for free media.
trollhattan
@Not That Guy:
I so love working for a thumping ignoramus. Better when it’s a client and not a boss, but still….
Lavocat
HEY! Take this quarter, go downtown, and have a rat gnaw that thing off your face!
Good day to you, Madam!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f9SdiLL4o0
OldDave
@Southern Beale: This post, she is about chemistry.
jibeaux
I’m going to rock Avocado’s Law tonight. Friday night Mexican FTW!
gene108
@Southern Beale:
Whatever it is you want it to be about…
max
That number: 6.02*10^23.
Tsk. It’s 6.022140857×10^23. Said constant I could never remember worth a damn for Chemistry class. Speed of light? No problem. Pi? No sweat.
‘So what’s Avogadro’s number?’
‘Isn’t fucking six something or other?’
‘You Have To Know This For The Exam!’
‘I can’t even remember how to spell the guy’s name right.’
‘What?
‘Euclid! Pythagoras! Ptolemy! Hypatia! Fermat! Euler! LeGrange! No sweat. And this guy is …. Aahgadro…crap…Avadro…crap…Amagado…Amadeus…fuck it…Avocado! Guacamole!’
max
[‘I hate that guy’s name.’]
trollhattan
@gene108:
Just in a very concise measure.
JCJ
How many atoms are in a bowl of guacamole?
Avocado’s number
Linda Featheringill
LOL!
Loved the entire thread! I was familiar with Avogadro [TMI?] but didn’t know that he had a special day.
Happy day, Amedeo.
:-)
raven
@Southern Beale: Me neither but I don’t care.
maimata
@gene108: and then using military time put 23 ( 11 pm) as the time
Matt McIrvin
@Southern Beale: It’s about the mole, a measure of “amount of stuff” that is big enough that you can measure it with simple lab equipment, but is scaled to how massive the molecules or atoms are.
So a mole of some homogeneous substance should always be the same number of atoms or molecules (or roughly analogous “formula units”, for things like salts where speaking of molecules is not strictly accurate).
And that number is Avogadro’s number. It’s a big number.
It’s important in chemistry, since, among other things, the amount of stuff you have in moles is related to the amount of some chemical reaction it can do.
dlm
@Southern Beale: I don’t know either, but I enjoyed the Queen clip. RIP Freddie.
realbtl
So that’s why I got a sudden craving for chicken mole and threw in a batch in the crock last night. It was yummy for dinner today and then I come upon this thread. Scary.
Brachiator
Open thread, eh?
Oh Carol, don’t let them take your name away.
In the UK and Wales, the name Carol is nearly becoming extinct.
This has led Prince Charles to run screaming to his momma. “Please let me be king soon!! **
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/11-baby-girl-names-about-to-go-extinct-a6702916.html
** Carol is the feminine of “Carolus,” Charles
SRW1
When I think of one mole of substance I prefer 18 ml of water over 12 g of carbon. Cause when you gulp a pint of beverage that reminds you just what resource hogs humans really are.
Also too: 18 ml of the liquid form corresponds to about 55 liters in the gaseous phase. Gives me the vapors.
Arm The Homeless
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I will never forget being really stoned, watching the streetlight until 12:05, wondering if we had enough chips for the end of civilization. The rest of the night was fairly blurry.
My thanks for your service to your fellow man.
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
That’s a bad, circular description of a mole. The simple explanation is that a mole is just a number, so that a mole of something is that many of them. We define that number, Avogadro’s number, to be the number of atoms in 12 grams of pure carbon-12 (the isotope of carbon with 6 protons and 6 neutrons), and it winds up being approximately 6.02 x 10**23. So if you have Avogadro’s number of anything- atoms, molecules, or moles– you have a mole of it.
There is actually now a serious discussion about changing the way we define the kilogram to make this a bit more sensible. Right now, the kilogram is defined in terms of a unique physical object, a cylinder of platinum/iridium alloy kept in Paris; it’s the only one of our basic units that’s defined that way rather than in terms of some physical measurement that can theoretically be carried out anywhere. The goal is to redefine the kilogram in terms of a new reference object- a sphere of ultra-pure, isotopically enriched silicon- that can be measured precisely enough that we can define exactly the number of each kind of atom in it. That would then effectively redefine the mole from being the number of atoms of 12C in 12 grams to being some specific number, and the kilogram from being a unique physical object to being a specific number of moles of specific silicon isotopes.
Baud
How much is a mole when you convert to metric? #ChafeeIsMissed
dmsilev
Ideally.
Of course, if that temperature is sufficiently low or the pressure is sufficiently high, there are …loopholes.
Eric
@Roger Moore: it will be called a Pamela Anderson
dmsilev
Also, too, let’s not forget the classic question of what a mole of moles would be like.
Short version: It’s messy.
Roger Moore
@Eric:
That’s silicone, not silicon.
scav
Mole^3
A mole of moles eating mole would occupy what volume?
Extra credit: include napkins in calculations.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
I got there first, neener, neener!
SiubhanDuinne
O/T, but this is sad news for anyone who follows Booman: his brother died unexpectedly yesterday afternoon.
http://www.boomantribune.com
I have never yet been able to figure out how to comment on his blog, although clearly it is possible, but if I could, I’d send him condolences. RIP, Martin’s brother.
Eric
@Roger Moore: rounded the ‘e’ up ;)
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
That sucks. You need an account to comment there. I used to post the occasional comment, but haven’t done it in a while. Glad to hear he’s with family.
schrodinger's cat
So Avogadro gets his day, what about Planck?
dmsilev
@Roger Moore: Thhhhbbbbt.
Anyway, I mainly deal with micromoles (the numerical quantity, not the result of some twisted and rather confused genetic engineering, which is kind of a pity really).
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat: He gets an infinitesimally small amount of time.
schrodinger's cat
@dmsilev: Have you finished moving your lab? What is micromole? 6.023 x 10 ^ 17?
scav
@schrodinger’s cat: Planck clearly needs a day near Talk Like A Pirate Day. Celebrated by a Very Slow Marathon with a pool at the end.
David Koch
With Webb and Chaffee dropping Hillary’s only competitors are Sanders and Baud.
Thats going to be one hellva 3-way debate in November
Baud
@David Koch:
I’m glad you remembered to say “debate.”
jl
@Baud: You need equal free media time in front of the Benghazi committee too.
David Koch
Quinnipiac Poll — Iowa Oct 14-20 (Sept numbers in parentheses)
Clinton………………51% (40)
Sanders…………….40% (41)
Two take aways:
1. Sanders’ supporters have always insisted his numbers would grow when he gained more name I.D. His name I.D. is now at 91%
2. Sanders supporters say all the polls saying Hillary won the debate are skewed because they’re not limited to only people who watched the debate. In this poll, Q limited the question to only debate watchers and Clinton still won by a 2 to 1 margin, just like in the other polls.
SRW1
@David Koch:
O’Malley!!
Baud
@David Koch:
Huge jump for Clinton. Did that came from Biden’s numbers?
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: We’re moved, but we’re still setting up (target for being done is early January). Re: micromoles, the cryostats I use work by circulating a special fluid mixture[*] around in a loop, and the temperature you can reach is largely determined by how many micromoles/second your pumps can push. Along with things like heat exchanger efficiency and other practical annoyances.
[*] a combination of ordinary helium and helium-3
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
Oh, you work with big numbers. I routinely work with femtomoles down into attomoles, and with the right project, we can detect down into the high zeptomole range.
benw
@Not That Guy: As long as you keep the leading 0’s any order of MM/DD/YYYY still sorts chronologically right?
SRW1
@efgoldman:
Caught it in time!
Baud
@jl:
Agreed. I will need to come up with a scheme so outrageous that Congress will have no choice but to investigate me.
I will not be ignored.
Eric
@Roger Moore: what would a grouchomole be?
David Koch
@Baud: has to be. he had 12% in the Sept poll.
srv
Avacados are good any day, they don’t need a special day.
Is Obama setting up Trump?
Iowa Old Lady
@SiubhanDuinne: Unexpected deaths are so hard. My parents gradually fell away from us, which made it easier to let go when the day came.
Mike J
@benw: Not if you have more than one year’s worth of data.
SRW1
@Baud:
You could hint that you know about a mole in, say, the Pentagon!
dmsilev
@Roger Moore: Basically, yeah. I’m all about mass transfer rates, the more the merrier. Or, the more the colder, which is what we’re really after. If I can push my fridge to hit 10 mK instead of 15, it’s a good day.
Baud
@SRW1:
Wouldn’t work. The GOP would assume it was one of theirs.
David Koch
Thanks Obama
schrodinger's cat
@SRW1: That certainly won’t be a happy mole day!
Dupe70
Wait we’re taking about moles without discussing the best reference ever: a mole of moles.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/4/
SRW1
@Baud:
What about you let them know that the number you are talking about is really yoooooge?
Steeplejack (phone)
@benw:
No, because all of the, say, June dates, from whatever year, will sort ahead of all the July dates:
06/20/2014
06/23/2015
07/03/2009
07/20/2014
Seanly
I was just talking about Avogadro’s Number with my wife the other day. She was wondering what the fugg I was talking about…
dmsilev
Troller-in-Chief:
NotMax
Mole Day? Once again, Secret Squirrel gets short shrift.
BTW, Obama’s proclamation in advance of tomorrow’s United Nations Day:
Roger Moore
@benw:
No. It winds up sorting first by month, then by day, then by year, so 10/23/2015 comes before 10/24/2014.
SiubhanDuinne
@Iowa Old Lady:
My own mother died very unexpectedly (40 years ago this week). My dad died slowly and incrementally. I can argue the upsides and downsides for both, not that there’s a whole lot of upside (usually) to having a parent die.
@Baud:
Thanks for telling me about needing a Booman account to comment. I suppose it probably explains that somewhere on the site, but I’ve rarely been moved to say anything so I doubt I’ll bother. Still, I’d like him to know that he and his family have my sympathy. Putting it out there in the universe.
piratedan
@schrodinger’s cat: he’s constantly with us…..
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
OK, that makes sense. I’m doing mass spec, where we can get some pretty good sensitivity as long as stuff ionizes efficiently. We aren’t to the point where we’re actually able to measure 100% of the generated ions, but we’re getting closer than I ever thought we would.
Baud
@SRW1:
Maybe if I whisper Avogadro in their ear, they’ll think it’s some conspiracy involving feriners.
Seanly
@srv:
If only governments could institute some spending programs. Like if there were significant components of our public infrastructure that could use revitilization and repair. Too bad all of our bridges, roads, dams, sewers, water systems, electrical grid, and airports are in such excellent shape that they don’t need an infusion of work worth trillions of dollars.
David Koch
I wonder who is going to play Baud on the SNL parody?
I’m betting Christoper Walken.
EthylEster
Speaking as a former chem prof, I was always amazed at the difficulty many students had with the chemical concept of a mole.
Dozens(=12) of things, they got. A mole (=6.02 times ten to the power of twenty three) of things, they did not get.
jl
@Baud: They may call HRC again Nov 7. Start sending her lots of emails, that should get your named mentioned and you can work from there.
In honor of this post, send some recipes for chicken mole tamales.
David Koch
Baud
@jl:
Who do you think I am? Sid Blumenthal?
Rising Above
I see some of you are prematurely celebrating Jeb Bush’s announcement of campaign funding cuts.
I have two words for you:
Pump fake.
That’s all this is. A good old-fashioned pump-fake. Make the opponents both in the GOP and Democrat Party overconfident, and then strike when they least expect it. Cash flow is great–this is all a PR move.
After all, I’m still here, aren’t I?
It’s All About the Benjamins, baby…
Baud
@David Koch:
Gilbert Gottfried.
Mike in NC
@Rising Above: Go change your pants, moron. The smell must be terrible.
schrodinger's cat
@EthylEster: Students struggle with the concept of exponents, even exponents of 10. Over reliance on calculators is making our students opposite of smart.
ETA: I had no problems with exponents or Avogadro’s number, organic chemistry on the other hand, do not want.
jl
@Baud:
” Who do you think I am? Sid Blumenthal? ”
For Gawd’s sake, are you as bad a campaigner as Jeb??
You need to aim for that level of infamous depravity. Absol-Fing-utely!
The GOP ever called you a combo of Hitler/Stalin/Mao? You have a lot of ground to make up. Those are HRC’s and Sander’s nicknames by now.
Edit: Yeesh! I want all my campaign contributions back. You can find yourself another mega-donor. I’m not sure you’re a first rate political product anymore.
NotMax
@Rising Above
One trick racist pony does repetitive trick again. What a maroon.
Money? Third quarter campaign number$.
some guy
@Rising Above:
so the Cheerios are still as fresh as the waffles at that morning complimentary breakfast at the Motel 6? Yes, good to know jeb! is keeping the most useful cogs in his machine well fed. too bad about the other 40% of the drones.
Now that Marco is beating him on both national and Florida polling, it’s good you can keep with the stiff upper lip. you go, girl!
David Koch
Thanks Obama.
It matters who is President. Kerry and Hillary would have us knee deep in the big sandy.
You do what you can, but it must be grounded in realty and pragmatism, and above all, don’t do stoopid shit.
Gawd, we’re gonna miss his steady hand.
Baud
@jl:
That’s cold, man. Real cold.
some guy
are those bells tolling?
PurpleGirl
@gene108: I know what you mean. In high school I took a lot of physical science classes and in college I began as a chemistry major. (Chemistry for chemistry’s sake, not as a pre-med chemistry major as many were doing in the early 1970s.)
Baud
@some guy:
Oh man. I cringed. Do you know how much it takes for me to feel bad for a Bush.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Link fail. You fix.
PurpleGirl
@Roger Moore: I did that for file names at the non-profit I worked at. The file names began with the date and then had an abbreviation for what the item was. It meant the files sorted easily and I could tell what the item was — a letter or training materials.
Roger Moore
@PurpleGirl:
We started doing that for our file names some time around Y2K. It makes life a lot easier when alphabetic sort gives you the same result as date sort.
jl
@some guy: That is sad. Mommy and Daddy and Big Brother are going to convene an effing meeting to kbbitz and nitpick and generally ‘help’ poor old Jeb?.
“Awww pa, I’m trying real hard… I really am…”
Maybe one of the reasons Jeb?’s campaign stinks so much is that dysfunctional family is trying to pull the strings on Jeb? “my own man” Bush. How many BS rules they got for Jeb?? Don’t criticize W…. don’t rock the GOP boat… what else?
What a sad shit show.
ruemara
For those who care, shoot is going amazing. We’re already on the last 3 scenes of the day and I had to break the team twice for an hour or so to give the sun time to move into position. Now, off to polish off today’s scenes.
Gravenstone
One of my co-workers today thought Mole Day to be taking things a bit too far. Or course, he just shook his head and sighed when introduced to the concept of Pi Day.
PurpleGirl
@max: Isn’t the speed of light measured in furlongs per fortnight?
;)
schrodinger's cat
@ruemara: That sounds great. What is your project about, can you tell us?
Cervantes
Tom Levenson, you might take another look at your post (and some of the comments) to see if you want to clearly distinguish Avogadro’s number from Avogadro’s constant. Plus his name was Amedeo.
On the other hand, it is the week-end.
Of which have a great one!
farthestnorth
thanks for the Mole Day info. Sent it to my chem major kid who had never heard of it but has until 6:02 to celebrate..Fortunately he’s in Alaska so he still has some time…
Baud
@ruemara:
Awesome.
Gravenstone
@Mary G: Fairly simple. One mole of a material is equal in mass (expressed in grams) equal in value to its formula weight. That was the real genius of the thing, being able to express a fixed amount of something abstract (molecules) by looking at it as something that is readily measured.
Gravenstone
@Southern Beale: Science!
David Koch
I saw ¿Jeb? on MSNBC and he said he’s cutting back on staff and GOTV so he can use the money for more ads.
He really is dumber than his brother.
Ads won’t win low turnout caucuses and primaries. You need field organization.
SRW1
@some guy:
JEB?’s gonna get one hell of an asskicking.
“You can’t do that to the family name!”
Josie
@SiubhanDuinne: If you go to the home page, there is a choice on the right hand column to open an account. You fill in a name and email and they send a password to your email. Then, once you are signed in, you can click to leave comment at the end of a post.
SiubhanDuinne
@Josie:
Thanks!
ETA: In all my years of following Booman, I have never once noticed that :-)
Gravenstone
@dmsilev: I look at things like this and just shake my head. Coldest crap I can lay hands on is just liquid nitrogen. That’s nearly tropical from your perspective.
Gravenstone
@some guy: That sounds like a fun gathering.
Elizabelle
@RSA: Yes! I was thinking of that tasty chile and chocolate dish. Viva Mexico, especially you in the path of Patricia tonight.
Josie
@SiubhanDuinne: I hadn’t either. I wanted to send condolences so much that I kept searching and clicking on stuff until I found it. They don’t make it obvious.
PurpleGirl
@ruemara: Sounds good; hope the other days go as well for you.
dmsilev
@Gravenstone: We use liquid nitrogen at a couple of points in the cycle. It’s used when first starting the system up to get things moderately cool, prior to cooling to 4 K with liquid helium (you could use LHe solely, but it’s much more expensive than LN2), and once we’re running, we purify our working fluid by running it through a nitrogen-cooled filter (to freeze out any air which has found its way into the loop).
Keith G
Bit of an appititizer: Hils with Rachel tonight gabbing about Joe Biden.
David Koch
Even supporters are saying he’s a disaster who crapped his pants.
farthestnorth
don’t often agree with Barbara Bush but she is proving right in her earlier opinion that the country really does not need or want another Bush
Baud
@David Koch:
And sometimes it’s simply best to go without pants.
srv
The Bush Bat Cave is in Houston, I hear.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
John G. Cole for President!
WaterGirl
@ruemara: :: raises hand :: I care! That’s great news.
Gimlet
@jl:
Rubio is the heir apparent.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
I haven’t liked moles since I read “Thumbelina,” but Andersen may have been libeling them. Perhaps they’re perfectly nice animals.
Matt McIrvin
@EthylEster: I think the problem is that that number is not exactly known, so the actual definition is this roundabout thing involving “a number of grams equal to the molar mass”. What is the molar mass? Well, you could say it’s the molecular mass except that we have to apply it to things that don’t have molecules, so it’s the “formula unit” mass, but what is a formula unit?, and so on and so forth, and it gets just abstract and seemingly circular enough to be confusing.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
Voters are so fickle. Cole isn’t the only naked person in the world.
srv
Cutting taxes and spending results in growth. Jeb is just extending this long proven truism to his campaign staff.
There’s a reason Rise isn’t here – he was part of the bloat that was dragging Jeb’s campaign down.
/s
Poopyman
@Roger Moore:
That was a different Freddie Mercury song.
Gimlet
@srv:
Cutting taxes and spending results in growth.
But.. But.. the deficit, the debt!
How can we afford a tax cut when all we’ve heard the last eight years is “The Debt”.
PurpleGirl
Anybody else having problems playing the video? I get a message that it “can’t be played in my country”.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@ruemara:
So bringing that riding crop to the set helped?
;-p
You can make yourself a little crazy with pre-production planning, but it’s better to go a little crazy before you get on the set than to try and wing it and go completely crazy *on* the set. Mazel tov!
Mike in NC
NBC Nightly News tonight featured a segment on “A Campaign in Crisis” regarding a certain low energy, low testosterone mama’s boy.
Why did the troll just run away?
dmsilev
@Mike in NC: He didn’t run away. He. Backed. Up.
Big difference.
Renie
Just when RtR morphed into his new super-power Rising Above he gets kicked out. Oh well, guess he was thrown under the BRINKS TRUCKS.
catclub
@Mary G: If you did not understand it in organic, which is one or two years after basic chemistry, not a good sign.
catclub
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Shrews are FIERCE! Don’t know about moles.
catclub
@OldDave: My toilet, she weeps all the time. H/T David Sedaris.
catclub
@David Koch: Christopher Walken with a cowbell.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@catclub:
There is a very, very bad monster movie called “The Killer Shrews” that stars James Best and helps explain how he later ended up on “The Dukes of Hazzard” (desperation).
The “shrews” are all dogs in shrew masks who are *really* excited that they’re going to get more treats any minute now. They’re the happiest monsters you’ll ever see onscreen.
mclaren
Source: Jeb Bush hunkers down with family to assess his candidacy,” CBS News, 23 October 2015.
The Shelob of Kennebunkport is angry. You can practically see her venom sac throb with rage. There are going to be a lot of blood-drained husks hanging by cocoons from the ceiling after that meeting.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
“Attack of the Killer Shrews” is so bad it’s good. The “shrews” are dobermans with blankets on their backs. That 50s B movie is right up there with “Attack of the Giant Leeches,” “Earth Vs. the Spider,” and “Santa Claus Vs. the Martians.”
And do not underestimate the 1968 classic “Mars Needs Women.” Nothing is more terrifying to an earth woman than a green-faced guy wearing a gold football helmet.
tybee
@Baud:
ok. i’ve resisted but that comment got my vote.
mclaren
@David Koch:
Hahahaha! You forgot about the Spanish Inquisition.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!!
mclaren
@gene108:
Oh, c’mon! A mole is just 6.02 x 10 exp 23 molecules. Moles are useful because when you multiply a mole by the number of atomic mass units in a given molecule, you get the mass in grams of that amount of molecules. Hydrogen, for example, has amu of 1.0079, so a mole of hydrogen atoms masses 1.0079 grams.
Working the other way, you can find out how many molecules there are in any given mass of a compound or element. 10 grams of hydrogen has (10/(1.0079)*6.02 x 10 exp 23) hydrogen atoms.
Why do we care about that?
So you can proportion amounts of chemicals properly to produce chemical reactions without having anything left over or wasted.
Also, so you can apply the simple law pV = nRT to get changes in volume or pressure or temperature as you add or subtract the amount of gas in a mixture.
So moles are very useful. They’re even used tangentially in molecular gastonomy, when you cook using a combi oven. Yes! Cooking involves chemistry! And it’s good to know if you want to cook gourmet meals using sous vide cookers or combi ovens.
benw
@Mike J: @Steeplejack (phone): yep, that’s right.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Link fix.
Pee Cee
@Baud:
It’s already metric.
Brachiator
I prefer voles to moles.
Matt McIrvin
@Pee Cee: It’s actually slightly odd that the SI base unit is the mole, rather than a kilomole (to be consistent with the kilogram as the fundamental mass unit).