Mole (unit)

The mole (symbol mol) is a unit of measurement, the base unit in the International System of Units (SI) for amount of substance. One mole is an aggregate of exactly 6.02214076×1023 elementary entities which can be atoms, molecules, ions, ion pairs, or other particles. This number of entities equals 602,214,076,000,000,000,000,000, approximately 602 sextillion or 602 billion multiplied by one trillion. The number of particles in a mole is the Avogadro number (symbol N0) and the numerical value of the Avogadro constant (symbol NA) has units of mol−1. The relationship between the mole, Avogadro number, and Avogadro constant can be expressed in the following equation:

1

mol

=

N

0

N

A

=

6.02214076

×

10

23

N

A

{\displaystyle 1{\text{ mol}}={\frac {N_{0}}{N_{\text{A}}}}={\frac {6.02214076\times 10^{23}}{N_{\text{A}}}}}

The current SI value of the mole is based on the historical definition of the mole as the amount of substance that corresponds to the number of atoms in 12 grams of 12C, which made the molar mass of a compound in grams per mole, numerically equal to the average molecular mass or formula mass of the compound expressed in daltons. With the 2019 revision of the SI, the numerical equivalence is now only approximate, but may still be assumed with high accuracy.

Conceptually, the mole is similar to the concept of dozen or other convenient grouping used to discuss collections of identical objects. Because laboratory-scale objects contain a vast number of tiny atoms, the number of entities in the grouping must be huge to be useful for work.

The mole is widely used in chemistry as a convenient way to express amounts of reactants and amounts of products of chemical reactions. For example, the chemical equation 2 H2 + O2 → 2 H2O can be interpreted to mean that for each 2 mol molecular hydrogen (H2) and 1 mol molecular oxygen (O2) that react, 2 mol of water (H2O) form.