The Most Common Mistake with Moles!

Here's a question that can be a little complicated and is a good test of how well you understand

moles

. Well, here's a question: How many H2o molecules are in one mole of H2O molecules? Well, think about this for a second. You can take a math break. Watch the video and when you have your answer, turn it back on. Okay, I got it. When I ask people this question, I usually get one of two very

common

answers. The first is I don't know and the second is one molecule of h2o in one mole of h2o molecules unfortunately neither of these are really what I'm looking for.

I am looking for the correct answer to this question. How many h2o molecules are there in one mole of h2o molecules is 602 hexillions of h2o molecules and this is often abbreviated to this number. 602 hexillion is often abbreviated as 6.02 times 10 to the power of 23, it's just this number written in scientific notation, okay, so if you did it right, that's a great job, if this was a bit complicated for you, keep going looking and we will quickly talk about

moles

so that this type of problem does not confuse you again and you will be ready with these concepts.

So what is a mole? Well I always like to say that a mole is like a dozen except a dozen has 12 things and a mole has 602 hexillion things which is pretty big it's a lot bigger than a dozen now this number 602 hexillion is really big it has all these zeros that are a big pain to write, so many times when we want to write this number we abbreviate it in scientific notation as 6.02 times 10 to the power of 23. Well, now many people, including me, get very scared by this number. You see, it's like, well, what do I do with this?

I have this 10 to the power of 23 and 6.02. but it is very important to note that this number is just an abbreviated version of 602 hexillion, so when you see or hear 6.02 multiplied by 10 to the power of 23, don't panic, just think of it as an abbreviation of 602 hexillion, So what is the mole? a mole is like a dozen, except that a dozen has 12 things and a mole has 602 hexillions of things and these 602 hexillions of things are often abbreviated as 6.02 times 10 to the power of 23, so now we can apply what we have learned here to the problem that we started at the beginning of the video, now we know what a mole is and every time we see that it is something that talks about a mole, we know how many things are in that mole, okay, if someone asks how many jelly beans are in one mole of jelly beans and look at these jelly beans here, the answer is 602 hexillion jelly beans or we can abbreviate it as 6.02 times 10 to the power of 23 jelly beans because there are always 602 hexillion things in one mole of anything or we could have one mole of pennies , how many things? in a mole of pennies 602 hexillions of pennies in that mole or we can abbreviate it as 6.02 times 10 to the power of 23 pennies see where this is going now here's a question we had at the beginning of the video, how many water molecules are in one? mole of h2o molecules, well a mole is just another word for 602 hexillion things, so there are 602 hexillion h2o molecules in 1 mole of h2o molecules or if we want to shorten it, there are 6.02 times 10 to the power of 23 molecules of h2o in one mole.