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
we know the mass of electrons/protons/neutrons
we know how many of each (on average) are in a Nitrogen atom
We know there are 6.022×10^23 to a mole.
the rest is just multiplication. averageMass*1 Mole=mass of 1 mole of the thing
Yep, you have it right.
The molar mass is defined as the mass of one mole of your stuff.
It’s directly linked to the number of nucleons, because the original definition was “as much atoms as there are in 12g of Carbon 12”, which is for all intent is equivalent to 1g per nucleon.
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.
Yes, that’s what that means. If you measured the mass of 6.022 x 10^23 nitrogen atoms, it’d come out to (roughly) 14 grams.
Mol, without the e, is a named quantity, like “dozen”.
When you say you have a mol of carbon atoms, that’s like saying you have a dozen carbon atoms. Well, the number is a lot more than 12, but it works the same way. As you say, it makes the masses easier to talk about because the mass of a dozen nitrogen atoms would still be very, very small.
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