How are a mole and a dozen similar?

1 Answer
Maxwell · Stefan V.
Jul 17, 2016

A mole is just a name given to describe how many 'things' there are.

Explanation:

It's not that confusing as it seems so let me give you an example.

A dozen, as you know, is a common term used to describe something that contains 12 of something. It is commonly used to describe eggs.

A dozen eggs is just saying we have 12 eggs. It doesn't even have to be eggs. It could be a dozen pencils, a dozen muffins, a dozen cars, etc. It is just known that a dozen means 12 'things'.

Similarly, a mole describes that there are 6.02⋅1023 molecules of something. So say I have 1 mole of H2O. This means I have 1 mole of H2O and that means I have 6.02⋅1023 molecules of H2O.

You can even use moles to describe how many hairs are on your head, how many moles of sand grains there are, etc; moles is just a name given to describe how many of 'something' you have.

It is more convenient for chemists to describe reactions and molecules by moles instead of saying, "We reacted 6.02⋅1023 molecules of H2O with 1.80⋅1024 molecules of HCl."

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