THE MOLE

INQUIRY QUESTIONS
Form groups of 3-4, collect a whiteboard and pens and answer
following questions
1. Why was carbon the first element assigned a weight?
2. Why does a mole of Carbon -12 weigh EXACTLY 12.00000000
g?
3. When you look at the periodic table, why do elements have atomic
masses with decimals??
 INQUIRY QUESTIONS
Form groups of 3-4, collect a whiteboard and pens and answer
following questions
1. Why was carbon the first element assigned a weight?

Carbon is the element of LIFE! It held great value in the chemistry

community, and is the basis of a major subdivision of Chemistry known as
Organic Chemistry.

Remember unit 1!?

 INQUIRY QUESTIONS
Form groups of 3-4, collect a whiteboard and pens and answer
following questions
2. Why does a mole of Carbon -12 weigh EXACTLY 12.00000000
g?

Actually, it’s the other way round, Avogadro wanted a mole to be EXACTLY
12.000000 g of carbon. He picked 12.000000 g, because carbon contains 6
protons and 6 neutrons in it’s nucleus.
 INQUIRY QUESTIONS
Form groups of 3-4, collect a whiteboard and pens and answer
following questions
3. When you look at the periodic table, why do elements have atomic
mass between that have decimals?
Unfortunately, not everything is simple.

As you remember from Science 10 elements have the same number of

protons but can have different numbers of neutrons. These atoms of the same
element are known as isotopes. The number on the table is a weighted
AVERAGE of all the isotopes.
 ATOMIC MASS
Mass: A measure of the amount of matter
Atomic Mass: The average mass of all the isotopes of a
particular element

Atoms of different elements have different masses

 ATOMIC MASS
• The atomic mass is found by comparing the mass of an
atom of an element to the mass of an atom of Carbon-12
• Carbon-12 is assigned an atomic mass of exactly
12.000000000000000000000 u (“u” stands for “unified
atomic mass unit”)
 ATOMIC MASS
• The mass of one individual atom is extremely small
• A large number of atoms is required to provide enough
mass to measure its mass
• A MOLE is a unit that measures the number of atoms
that is equivalent to the atomic mass of a particular
element
 A MOLE OF PENNIES
1. Please download a Mole of Pennies rom my website
2. Complete the activity with 1 or 2 neighbours (groups of 3)
 HOW BIG IS THE MOLE?

If you had Avogadro’s

number of unpopped
popcorn kernels, and
spread them cross the US,
the country would be
covered in popcorn to a
depth of over 14.5 km’s
 HOW BIG IS THE MOLE?

If 6.02 x 1023 doughnuts

were divided equally among
Earth’s 7 billion people,
each person would have
about 8.6 x 1013 or
86 000 000 000 000
(86 trillion) doughnuts
 HOW BIG IS THE MOLE?

One mole of paper would

make a stack that would
reach to the moon more
than 80 billion times.
 HOW BIG IS THE MOLE?

One mole of seconds is

about 19 quadrillion
years, or 4 240 666 times
the age of the earth, or 954
150 times the age of the
universe.
 HOW BIG IS THE MOLE?

If you were able to count

atoms at the rate of 10
million per second, it would
take about 2 billion years
to count the atoms in one
mole
WELCOME TO THE…
DO YOU WANT AVOGADRO'S #?
 WHAT IS A MOLE?

• Avogadro’s Number
• 6.022 141 x 1023 items per mole
• The abbreviation for the unit mole is mol.
(do not confuse this with molecules!)
 A MOLE IS JUST A QUANTITY!
• … a dozen eggs = 12 eggs
• … a dozen books = 12 books

• Similarly,
• … a mole of particles = 6.02 x 1023 particles
• … a mole of eggs = 6.02 x 1023 eggs
HOW MANY LITHIUM ATOMS ARE IN 3.2 MOL
OF LITHIUM?
 HOW MANY OXYGEN ATOMS ARE IN
6.02 X 1023 MOLECULES OF OXYGEN GAS?