“A mole is 6.02 x 1023…”
“The chart weight in grams is a mole, is a mole…”
If, upon reading the above phrases, you know the proper scansion for the first one and the proper tune for the second one (hint: it sounds a lot like “If You’re Happy and You Know It”), that means 1) you’re a nerd; and either 2a) you took chemistry at Newington High School from Dr. William Pilotte; or 2b) you took chemistry somewhere else from someone equally strange. :) Because I fit into categories 1 and 2a, I’m celebrating National Mole Day today.
What is Mole Day? I explained on Mole Day 2002:
This annual holiday — which technically starts at 6:02 AM and ends at 6:02 PM — does not actually celebrate small furry animals that dig holes in the ground, but rather, a chemistry concept: Avogadro’s number, the “mole,” 6.02 x 1023. (10/23… 1023… get it?) That’s 602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, for the scientific-notionally challenged among us, and it’s an inconceivably huge number. How huge? A mole of marshmellows would cover the planet Earth 12 miles high, and a mole of seconds would last so long, the universe would die out before it was done!
“Mole Day” is technically only 12 hours long; it lasts from 6:02 AM to 6:02 PM local time (6:02 10/23… 6.02 x 1023… oh, the numerical hilarity!). So I’m a little slow on the uptake here (hat tip: Joel for reminding me that today is the big day), but we still have a little less than four hours left to pay our respects to good old Avogadro and his number. So… Happy Mole Day, everyone!
The Notre Dame chemistry department does not have any special Mole Day events on its calendar. Lame! But a Google News search reveals that they’re celebrating at Bucknell University and at Belleville High School in Ann Arbor. And there’s celebrating in lots of other places, according to this press release from MathematiciansPictures.com.
Others blogging about Mole Day: Supercords, Blondie, daecrist, biichan, coolblusunlight (warning: profanity), and Jacob Haqq-Misra (who notes that today is also the 6,010th “birthday of our very own Universe, which was apparently born on October 23, 4004 B.C.–at least according to the Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar,” which is based on “a reading of the Bible by Anglican Archbishop James Ussher in 1650″).
For much more, visit the National Mole Day Foundation.
P.S. For Mole Day greeting cards, click here. Heh.
October 23rd, 2006 at 3:36:38 pm
I am disappointed in the severe attention paid to Mole Day, and the comparatively MINISCULE attention given to National Pirate Day! Which, OH by the way, was a full 24 hours. Priorities, people!
October 23rd, 2006 at 3:39:26 pm
I had no idea it was National Mole Day!! Makes it all the more poignant, I guess, that we have a dead mole in a trap in our back yard today. ;)
October 23rd, 2006 at 4:16:18 pm
What happened to National ‘Nothing Happened on this Day’ day?
October 23rd, 2006 at 4:26:16 pm
Sounds like Avogadro needs an abogado !
October 23rd, 2006 at 4:36:51 pm
Additionally, as per my chemistry professor softball teammate, this week is National Chemistry Week, so it is fitting that National Mole Day (or 12 hours) conincides with this week. If you were an Emory chemistry student, you would be celebrating with a periodic table of elements made out of cupcakes :-)
October 23rd, 2006 at 4:39:35 pm
I’m proud to say that every year my high school chemistry teacher had a special celebration for mole day, complete with a birthday cake and everything. In fact, I think he had a mole stuffed animal and also a SONG about mole day which he played for us during class. Ahhh…childhood…
October 23rd, 2006 at 5:40:37 pm
My sons’ chemistry teacher had them make hand-sewn stuffed fabric moles to decorate the classroom for the big day.
Don’t remember there being a cake…
October 23rd, 2006 at 5:43:09 pm
I’ll see your “equally strange” Chemistry teacher, and raise you my even stranger one.
October 23rd, 2006 at 6:20:00 pm
Thanks, BLL.
:)
[Southern Girl ~ poignant, schmoignant, that’s unmitigated Molicide. You have been reported to PETM. ;]
October 23rd, 2006 at 8:28:56 pm
Yup, I’m in category 1 and 2b. We, too, made stuffed cloth moles for the occasion, sang a song, and had cake. The teacher would give out “mole dollars” during the year (to be redeemed on mole day for prizes) for particularly brilliant answers in class, so the excitement build-up started at the beginning of the academic year. I’m delighted to know chemistry teachers everywhere are that weird.
October 24th, 2006 at 12:05:55 pm
We also celebrated Mole Day in high school chemistry with a Mole cake and with optional stuffed animal moles for extra credit! It was my first year in America and I found the whole thing very strange.
October 24th, 2006 at 2:36:48 pm
Can’t resist posting the technical definition (stolen from wiki, but i know it’s correct):
A mole is the amount of substance of a system which contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in 0.012 kilogram of carbon-12, where the carbon-12 atoms are unbound, at rest and in their ground state.[1] The number of atoms in 0.012 kilogram of carbon-12 is known as Avogadro’s number, and is determined empirically. The currently accepted value is 6.0221415(10)×1023 mol-1
Big fun ;)
Also can’t resist this:
it’s an inconceivably huge number.
Enigo Montoya, where are you?
November 2nd, 2006 at 11:13:09 pm
How CAn i download this song for my teacher….i told her id burn it on a cd by tomorrow and i cant find it anywher:’( can someone send it to me please!
November 4th, 2006 at 12:05:57 am
Thanks for the plug. If we don’t take moles seriously, who will?
Shane