1. The Biology of a Mole Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Insectivora
Family: Talpidae

2. Wrong kind of
Mole !!

3. In Chemistry a Mole is a Unit
It is an SI unit symbolizing an amount of matter

4. The Number
We have words in English that signify a certain number of items
Couple : two
Dozen : twelve
Baker’s dozen : 13
Gross : 144

5. The Number A mole also represents a certain number of things
A mole represents x 1023 things

6. 6.022 x 1023

7. The Number That’s a 6 followed by 23 zeros ! ! !
That is truly a mindboggling number.
Just how big is it? Glad you asked.

8. A little number crunching
A person who lives seventy years lives 2.2 x 109 seconds, about 2 billion seconds. If this person could count to a billion during each second of his life he could still not count this high

9. More number crunching
If each of the six billion people on the face of the earth were given 100 trillion dollars each, the sum total of all the money would equal one mole of dollars.

10. More number crunching
If you were to cover the state of Texas in quarters, and then stacked quarter upon quarter, you would have to make enough layers of quarters covering Texas to measure over 400 miles high before you would have one mole of quarters.

11. Why would anyone ever need a number this big?
Glad you asked

12. A little background
The need for the number comes from an attempt to make a connection between the smallest particle of a substance and a measurable amount in a lab.

13. Atomic masses
Atomic masses listed on a periodic table are given in units called atomic mass units.
Unfortunately, these units are very tiny, and are very nearly impossible to measure in the lab.
An Italian scientist discovered a way to show that a certain number of atoms of any certain substance had a mass of the same number in grams as the atomic mass was in atomic mass units

14. A mole of a substance 6.022 x 1023 one mole of atoms
Using the same number, 12.0, but changing the unit to grams represents one mole of carbon
6.022 x 1023
one mole of atoms
One carbon atom
Has an atomic mass
Of 12.0 atomic mass units

15. This guy kind of looks like a mole!
The discoverer
This guy kind of looks like a mole!
Amedeo Avogadro was the Italian scientist that calculated the number that equals one mole. For that reason the number itself is named after him.
Avogadro’s Number, NA, is the basis for the mole

16. So, what’s the clincher? !
The mole allows us to calculate the number of atoms in a certain number of grams. Since grams of a substance are easily measured in a lab, we now have a way to find out how many atoms are in a laboratory sized sample of material.