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
To add some background here, an interesting question is why and how we know the number in detail.
Imagine you do chemistry without knowing Avogadros number. You can figure out the relative weights of different atoms/molecules, and calculate with that, and do that for the entire periodic table. Perhaps define the lightest one as 1 unit of atomic world mass.
But all your recipes will be in one measure of this, two measures of that. How can you find out how many of the tiny things there is in one gram?
There are ofc strategies, Google the early methods, it is an interesting read. But a ton of chemistry was done without knowing avogadros number.
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