Introduction to Moles

In this video we're going to talk about the basics of

moles

, we're going to learn what they are and we're going to talk about some of these important numbers and terms. Now we will start from the beginning. about

moles

here, so no matter how much you know or don't know about moles, this video will be a great place to start. What is a mole? I'm not talking about the cute little furry creatures that live underground here. I'm talking about the type of moles that are very important in chemistry, so a mole is the name for a specific number of things.

Well, one mole is like a dozen. Well, a dozen is the name of 12 things or twelve things in a dozen. a mole is like that, but it is much bigger than a dozen, twelve things, in a dozen, in a mole, there are 602 hexillions of things, this is 6:02, followed by 2100 and two hexillions, so a mole like a dozen is a name for certain numbers. there are twelve things in a dozen there are 602 hexillion things in a mole this is a gigantic number now there is one thing that confuses people about moles, they forget that a mole is the name of 602 hexillions of things and they think that a mole is an abbreviation for the word molecule many people think this, they look old.

I think you mean molecule, no, no, if I write correctly, I don't mean molecule, I mean a group of 602 hexillion things, not one molecule, so there are 602 hexillion things in a mole and just like one dozen, we can have a mole of anything, so we could have a dozen donuts that would be 12 donuts or we could have a mole of donuts that would be 602 hexillion donuts or well, we could have jelly beans, a dozen jelly beans It would be 12 jelly beans and a mole of jelly beans would be 602 hexillion jelly beans, so sometimes people get scared by moles, but remember that they are very similar to 12 things in a dozen. 602 hexillion things in a bowl.

You can have a mole at Donuts. You can have a plate of jelly beans and a mole of cars and roll paperclips and a mole of bouncy balls as long as it's 602 hexillion things, you have a mole now let's talk a little about this real number 602 hexillion this number is often known as the number by Avogadro in honor of the Italian scientist who discovered it, but now look at this here write 602 hexillion this is a gigantic number 602 with 21 zeros then think about how painful it is to deal with this number correctly if you are doing math by hand, you have to write this down and do your multiplication and division with 21 zeros, even if you're using a calculator you have to write down all these zeros and make sure you have the right amount and then when you get your answer you have to go back and count how many zeros your answer has , it's a total hassle, so instead of writing 602 hexillion with all these zeros every time we want to talk about moles, we tend to abbreviate this number now, as you know when to abbreviate numbers in mathematics and science we usually use a technique called scientific notation and this is how we would abbreviate this number using scientific notation.

Okay, I have this big number 602 hexillion. I figured out where the decimal place would be. It would be right here and now. I move the decimal place until it's just one digit to the left, okay, and I count the number of points, so here it is 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 and now this is my new place because there is a six just one digit to the left, so I moved my decimal place 23 points to the left and that means that in scientific notation I would rewrite this number as 6.0 multiplied by 10 to the power of 23. 23 comes from the number of points I moved it to the left, so 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd power is how we often abbreviate this gigantic number 602 hexillion when we want to write it down and use it, for example, in math problems.

Now, this is a convenient option. way to write this gigantic number in scientific notation, but it's also a terrible way to write it because this number 6.02 times 10 to the power of 23 seems scary, right, it has this 10 with the exponent 6.02 times this, it's like the People see this number and they're like, oh my God, what do I do in this moment of relaxation? Okay 6.02 times 10 to the power of 23 may seem a little scary, but remember it's an abbreviation of 602 hexillion which is a gross which is an abbreviation of this Here's a very big number, every time you see 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd power, just remember that's an abbreviation for 602 hexillions.

Well now we have learned what a mole is, how many things are in a mole and we have learned how we can abbreviate this gigantic number 602 hexillion the last thing I want to do is give you an idea of ​​how gigantic this number 602 hexillion is how gigantic it really is okay like this Let's think about this mass of jelly beans that we talked about before, 602 hexillion jelly beans that you already know, we can abbreviate it as 6.02 times 10 to the power of 23 jelly beans. These are just three ways to write the same number. Well if you had 602 hexillion jelly beans that would be as big as the entire planet Earth, one mole of jelly beans would be as big as as big as one planet Earth, that's crazy, think about how many jelly beans there are, I mean really think about how many jelly beans would there be if your house was full of jelly beans, okay that would be gigantic, think about how many jelly beans there would be if every building in your city was made only of jelly beans, well that would be a ton, now imagine how many jelly beans you would have if the entire earth It was made of nothing more than jelly beans and that's how big a mole of something would be.

Now we could also have a mole of Donuts that would be 600 in hexillion Donuts 6.02 times 10 to the power of 23 Donuts if we had this amount of donuts and we stacked them one on top of the other so we would have 602 hexillion Donuts and we continue making the stack that this stack would reach from the earth to the Sun and vice versa 200 billion times this stack of donuts would go from the Earth to the Sun and back 200 billion times again think about how many donuts we would have if we just put donuts like that from your house to your school right, that would be a ton of donuts, now imagine going from the Earth to the Sun and back 200 billion times, that's how many donuts, 602 hexillion donuts, but now this is what's really interesting, we're talking about jelly beans and donuts here. , but many times in chemistry we talk about things that are much smaller, we are talking about atoms, now a mole of jelly beans would be as big as the planet Earth, but a mole of atoms is much smaller here in this container that I have approximately one mole of sulfur atoms, this yellow powder and these yellow chips are made entirely of sulfur atoms and there are about 602 hexillions of sulfur atoms in this little plate, so think about it, we have 602 hexillions of sulfur atoms here and Now, 602 hexillion jelly beans would be the size of planet Earth. 602 hexillion sulfur atoms can fit on this small plate.

This shows us how absolutely small a sulfur atom is. How small all the atoms are compared to one jelly bean. the size of a planet Earth but one mole of these little sulfur atoms can fit on this plate, so when we're dealing with something as small as atoms, one mole doesn't actually take up that much space because the things we're dealing with are so incredibly small that a giant number of just aren't that big, so to review what we've talked about, let's go over some of the key points, so a mole is like a dozen, except there are twelve things in a dozen and 602 hexillions of things in a mole. we can write this number in several ways we can make 602 with 21 zeros then we can call it 600 new hexillion or more commonly we can abbreviate this number in scientific notation as 6.02 times 10 to the power of 23 this number here 602 hexillion is often known as Avogadro's number and finally, at the end of the lesson, we saw how 602 hexillion is a giant number. 602 hexillion jelly beans would be the size of planet Earth, but the atoms are so small that one mole of atoms doesn't actually take up that space of 602 hexillion sulfur atoms, for example, is a pretty manageable size and that's an

introduction

to the moles.