Mole Day 2015

What is Mole day? Mole day is an event to celebrate science using chemistry as the star of the show, leading us to other disciplines.

What is a Mole? A mole is a number used for counting things, like a dozen is used for counting eggs. A mole is a much bigger number though, 6.02 times 10 to the 23. That means 602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 602 sextillion of something. We need a big number because we're counting molecules. Have a look at the pictures below and find the special box that contains one mole of air. You need a big big number to count molecules until you can see something and hold it in your hand. That's what we use the mole for. It's a way to measure out a certain amount of molecules for reactions.

Students who celebrated mole day enjoyed:

• • Meeting Amadeo Avogadro (whom the number was named after) and Dimitri Mendeleev who designed the periodic table on which we base our modern design. They also learned about Lucretius Madame Curie, Lavoisier, and Louis Pasteur. Each of them made a bridge into the new science that came after them.

  • Performing Chromatography to separate mixtures, and learn about how scientists use that and a similar test called electrophoresis to separate chemicals to make identifying them easier.

  • Use microscopes and models to find out how molecules bind together into crystals

  • Use different reactants like baking soda and vinegar and then find how to capture gas products of a reaction.

  • Find out how big Avogadro's number really is!