Mole Day!

October 20, 2010


Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science. ~Edwin Powell Hubble, The Nature of Science, 1954


Celebrated annually on October 23 from 6:02 a.m. to 6:02 p.m., Mole Day commemorates Avogadro’s Number (6.02 x 10 ^23), which is a basic measuring unit in chemistry. Mole Day was engendered to foster interest in chemistry. Many schools throughout the United States and around the world celebrate Mole Day with various activities related to chemistry. Trinity was no exception to this celebration. As the Trinity Chemistry Club, we put together an event open to students, professors, or any fellow chemistry lovers. The goal of our event was to entertain the audience with fun experiments and educate them about mole day and the chemistry behind our experiments.


In general, one mole of any substance contains Avogadro’s Number of molecules or atoms of that substance. This relationship was first discovered by Amadeo Avogadro (1776-1858). The relationship between one mole of a substance and how much physical substance one mole represents is difficult for many students to imagine. Thus, there are several examples to exhibit just how large one mole of a substance truly is:
•One mole of paper would make a stack that would reach to the moon more than 80 billion times.
•One mole of blood cells would be more than the total number of blood cells found in every human on earth.
•One mole of seconds is about 19 quadrillion years, 4,240,666 times the age of the earth, or 954,150 times the age of the universe itself.


Not only did we talk about what a mole is, we also performed 9 exciting experiments: nitrogen tri-iodide, fire resistant chemistry tests, the silver mirror reaction, the miracle reaction: changing water to wine to milk to beer, methanol rocket, elephant toothpaste, the oscillating clock reaction, colored fire,helium balloons and our trademark experiment: liquid nitrogen ice cream.