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
Normal units of measures don’t work on all scenarios. You don’t measure human height in miles. Instead, you’d use feet and inches.
Similarly, we won’t measure distance in astronomy in miles. Instead, we introduce larger units like light year, parsecond, etc.
In chemistry, we encounter large numbers when we’re measuring number of atoms or molecules in a sample. Rather than use million billion trillions, etc, we went ahead and defined a large number called the mole. It’s simply equal to 6.023×10^23.
Latest Answers