What is exactly one mole of a substance?

Question

I'm doing a chemistry Scavenger Hunt and need exactly one mole of something.

Answer 1

A mole is Avogadro's number of something. There are Avogadro's number of carbon-12 atoms in 12 grams of carbon-12. Avogadro's number turns out to be about 6.022×10^23.

In chemistry, a mole is Avogadro's number of atoms/molecules of a substance.

The mass of a mole of a substance is equal to that substance's relative mass. For example, one mole of water has a mass of about 18.016 grams, because the molar mass of water is about 18.016.

Answer 2

A mole is a number of molecules -- it's 6.022 x 10^23 molecules, to be exact.  Just as a kilometer is 1,000 meters, a mole is 6.022 x 10^23 molecules.

Answer 3

A "mole" is a number that corresponds to the number of atoms in a gram-mole of that atom. Thus, there are 6.022x10^23 atoms of carbon in 12.01 grams (as we measure them) of carbon. This is Avogadro's number and can relate to anything. Thus, you can have a "mole" of oranges, but the earth would NOT be able to store them. I suggest you stick with smaller stuff. Put 18 ml of water in a jar and go to the next item on your list.

Avogadro's number should be 2^79=6.044x10^23 to obey radioactivity, but the folks who decide these things still idolize a piece of metal in France. Some much for science.

Answer 4

1 mol of water is 18.02 g.  So if you assume you've got pure water, 18.02 mL of it will contain exactly 1 mol.

You could pick table sugar which has a molar mass of 342.3 grams.

Just don't do table salt; most salt is iodized so you'd have to know which was NaI and which was NaCl.