Hey guys. I’m struggling to understand the concept of moles, and was hoping someone could explain it a lot easier than in previous posts. I understand that a mole of something means that there is 6.022 x 10\^23 of that something (similar to the idea of 1 dozen = 12 things), but I don’t quite understand when for example 1 mole of Nitrogen is 14g.
If 1 mole of nitrogen means that there is 6.022 x 10\^23 nitrogen atoms, how does 1 mole of nitrogen equal 14g? Is it saying that 6.022 x 10\^23 nitrogen atoms (1 mole of nitrogen) is equal to 14g, since the mass of a nitrogen atom (single nitrogen atom) would be super small, and so we use moles to convert it into a reasonable mass for easier calculations e.g. 14g?
Hope that wasn’t too confusing :S
Thanks everyone! 🙂
In: Chemistry
If every watermellon weighed exactly 1 pound you could put an unknown number on a scale and count them that way. If you have 1000 pounds that means you have 1000 watermelons.
Apples are lighter than watermellons, so you might want to ask “well, if I had 1000 apples how different would that weight be” and you could figure that out. If you know every apple weighs half as much as a watermellon you would know that 1000 apples is 500 pounds or that you need 2000 apples to weigh the same as 1000 watermellons.
It’s basically that. but counting atoms is really hard so instead of a good round number like 1000, it’s a big silly number that happens to be how many carbon-12 atoms are in an ounce. But you would use it the same way as 1 pound watermellons and knowing 1000 must weigh 1000 pounds. But with a bigger crazier number to talk about something way too small. It’s for figuring out how many bananas you’d need on a truck to weigh the same as watermellons or how much a truck would weigh if you replaced every watermellon with a babana. Once you know the weight of one banana you could answer that.
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