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Happy Mole Day 2008!
Posted on | October 23, 2008 | 1 Comment
Today is Mole Day, so Happy Mole Day to You!
What is Mole Day? Here’s some info from the National Mole Day Foundation website (currently down, here’s the Google cache):
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 created as a way to foster interest in chemistry. Schools throughout the United States and around the world celebrate Mole Day with various activities related to chemistry and/or moles.
For a given molecule, one mole is a mass (in grams) whose number is equal to the atomic mass of the molecule. For example, the water molecule has an atomic mass of 18, therefore one mole of water weighs 18 grams. An atom of neon has an atomic mass of 20, therefore one mole of neon weighs 20 grams. 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) and he received credit for this after his death.
Mole Day was started in the 1980s and the NMDF was officially organized in 1991. I found out about Mole Day from the 2 Million Minutes blog (more on that excellent resource another day), and it’s now on my calendar forever. Congrats to the students at Treasure Valley Mathematics and Science Center and everyone else celebrating today. I love turning up things like this and I’m doing my part to spread it.
Don’t forget to mark your calendar for 3/3/09 for Square Root Day!
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November 4th, 2008 @ 9:40 am
[...] already mentioned 2 Million Minutes, and today I found out that Bob Compton, father of 2MM, has a startup called Indian Math Online. [...]