Lecture Presentation

Chapter 2
Atoms and
Elements

Christian Madu, Ph.D.

Collin College
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If You Cut a Piece of Graphite

If you cut a piece of graphite from the tip
of a pencil into smaller and smaller pieces,
how far could you go? Could you divide it
forever?
Cutting the graphite from a pencil tip into
smaller and smaller pieces (far smaller
than the eye could see), would eventually
end up with individual carbon atoms.
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If You Cut a Piece of Graphite

The word atom comes from the Greek
atomos, meaning indivisible.
You cannot divide a carbon atom into
smaller pieces and still have carbon.
Atoms compose all ordinary matterif you
want to understand matter, you must begin
by understanding atoms.
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Imaging and Moving Individual Atoms

On March 16, 1981, Gerd Binnig and
Heinrich Rohrer worked late into the night
in their laboratory.
Their work led to the development of
scanning tunneling microscopy (STM).
STM is a technique that can image, and
even move, individual atoms and molecules.
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Scanning Tunneling Microscopy

Binnig and Rohrer developed a type of

microscope that could see atoms.
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Imaging and Moving Individual Atoms

In spite of their small size, atoms are the
key to connecting the macroscopic and
microscopic worlds.
An atom is the smallest identifiable unit of
an element.
There are about
91 different naturally occurring elements, and
over 20 synthetic elements (elements not found in
nature).
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Early Ideas about the Building Blocks of

Matter
Leucippus (fifth century B.C.) and his
student Democritus (460370 B.C.) were
first to propose that matter was composed
of small, indestructible particles.
Democritus wrote, Nothing exists except atoms and empty
space; everything else is opinion.

They proposed that many different kinds of

atoms existed, each different in shape and
size, and that they moved randomly through
empty space.
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Early Building Blocks of Matter Ideas

Plato and Aristotle did not embrace the
atomic ideas of Leucippus and Democritus.
They held that
matter had no smallest parts.
different substances were composed of various
proportions of fire, air, earth, and water.

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Early Building Blocks of Matter Ideas

Later scientific approach became the
established way to learn about the
physical world.
An English chemist, John Dalton (1766
1844) offered convincing evidence that
supported the early atomic ideas of
Leucippus and Democritus.

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Modern Atomic Theory and the Laws That

Led to It
The theory that all matter is composed of
atoms grew out of observations and laws.
The three most important laws that led to
the development and acceptance of the
atomic theory are as follows:
The law of conservation of mass
The law of definite proportions
The law of multiple proportions
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The Law of Conservation of Mass

Antoine Lavoisier formulated the law of
conservation of mass, which states the
following:
In a chemical reaction, matter is neither
created nor destroyed.

Hence, when a chemical reaction occurs,

the total mass of the substances involved
in the reaction does not change.
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The Law of Conservation of Mass

This law is consistent with the idea that

matter is composed of small, indestructible
particles.
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The Law of Definite Proportions

In 1797, a French chemist, Joseph Proust
made observations on the composition of
compounds.
He summarized his observations in the law of
definite proportions:
All samples of a given compound, regardless
of their source or how they were prepared,
have the same proportions of their constituent
elements.
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The Law of Definite Proportions

The law of definite proportions is
sometimes called the law of constant
composition.
For example, the decomposition of 18.0 g of water
results in 16.0 g of oxygen and 2.0 g of hydrogen,
or an oxygen-to-hydrogen mass ratio of:

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The Law of Multiple Proportions

In 1804, John Dalton published his law of
multiple proportions.
When two elements (call them A and B)
form two different compounds, the masses
of element B that combine with 1 g of
element A can be expressed as a ratio of
small whole numbers.

An atom of A combines with either one,

two, three, or more atoms of B (AB 1, AB2,
AB3, etc.).
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The Law of Multiple Proportions

Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide are
two compounds composed of the same
two elements: carbon and oxygen.
The mass ratio of oxygen to carbon in carbon
dioxide is 2.67:1; therefore, 2.67 g of oxygen
reacts with 1 g of carbon.
In carbon monoxide, however, the mass ratio
of oxygen to carbon is 1.33:1, or 1.33 g of
oxygen to every 1 g of carbon.
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 The ratio of these two masses is itself a

small whole number.

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John Dalton and the Atomic Theory

Daltons atomic theory explained the laws
as follows:
1. Each element is composed of tiny, indestructible
particles called atoms.
2. All atoms of a given element have the same mass
and other properties that distinguish them from
the
atoms of other elements.
3. Atoms combine in simple, whole-number ratios to
form compounds.
4. Atoms of one element cannot change into atoms
of another element. In a chemical reaction, atoms
only change the way that they are bound together
with other atoms.
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The Discovery of the Electron

J. J. Thomson (18561940 ) cathode rays
experiments
Thomson constructed a partially evacuated
glass tube called a cathode ray tube.
He found that a beam of particles, called
cathode rays, traveled from the negatively
charged electrode (called the cathode) to the
positively charged one (called the anode).
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The Discovery of the Electron

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The Discovery of the Electron

Thomson found that the particles that
compose the cathode ray have the following
properties:
They travel in straight lines.
They are independent of the composition of the
material from which they originate (the cathode).
They carry a negative electrical charge.

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The Discovery of the Electron

J. J. Thomson measured the charge-to-mass
ratio of the cathode ray particles by deflecting
them using electric and magnetic fields, as
shown in the figure.
The value he measured was 1.76 103
coulombs (C) per gram.

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Millikans Oil Drop Experiment: The Charge

of the Electron
American physicist
Robert Millikan
(18681953),
performed his now
famous oil drop
experiment in which
he deduced the
charge of a single
electron.

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Millikans Oil Drop Experiment

By measuring the
The measured charge
strength of the electric
on any drop was
field required to halt
always a wholethe free fall of the
number multiple of
drops, and by figuring
1.96 1019, the
out the masses of the
fundamental charge
drops themselves
of a single electron.
(determined from their
radii and density),
Millikan calculated the
charge of each drop.
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The Discovery of the Electron

J. J. Thomson had
discovered the
electron, a negatively
charged, low mass
particle present within
all atoms.

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Millikans Oil Drop Experiment

With this number in hand, and knowing
Thomsons mass-to-charge ratio for
electrons, we can deduce the mass of an
electron:

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The Structure of the Atom

J. J. Thomson proposed that the negatively
charged electrons were small particles held
within a positively charged sphere.

This model, the most popular of the time,

became known as the plum-pudding model.
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Rutherfords Gold Foil Experiment

In 1909, Ernest Rutherford (18711937),
who had worked under Thomson and
subscribed to his plum-pudding model,
performed an experiment in an attempt to
confirm Thomsons model.
In the experiment, Rutherford directed the
positively charged particles at an ultra thin
sheet of gold foil.

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Rutherfords Gold Foil Experiment

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Rutherfords Gold Foil Experiment

The Rutherford experiment gave an
unexpected result. A majority of the
particles did pass directly through the foil,
but some particles were deflected, and
some (approximately 1 in 20,000) even
bounced back.
Rutherford created a new modela
modern version of which is shown in Figure
2.7 alongside the plum-pudding modelto
explain his results.
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Rutherfords Gold Foil Experiment

He concluded that matter must not be as

uniform as it appears. It must contain
large regions of empty space dotted with
small regions of very dense matter.
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Rutherfords Gold Foil Experiment

Building on this idea, he proposed the
nuclear theory of the atom, with three
basic parts:
1.

Most of the atoms mass and all of its positive

charge are contained in a small core called a
nucleus.
2.
Most of the volume of the atom is empty
space, throughout which tiny, negatively
charged electrons are dispersed.
3.
There are as many negatively charged
electrons outside the nucleus as there are
positively charged particles (named protons)
within the nucleus, so that the atom is
electrically neutral.
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The Neutrons
Although Rutherfords model was highly
successful, scientists realized that it was
incomplete.
Later work by Rutherford and one of his
students, British scientist James Chadwick
(18911974), demonstrated that the
previously unaccounted for mass was due
to neutrons, neutral particles within the
nucleus.
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The Neutrons
The mass of a neutron is similar to that of
a proton.
However, a neutron has no electrical
charge.
The helium atom is four times as massive as
the hydrogen atom because
it contains two protons
and two neutrons.

Hydrogen, on the other hand, contains

only one proton and no neutrons.
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Subatomic Particles
All atoms are composed of the same
subatomic particles:
Protons
Neutrons
Electrons

Protons and neutrons, as we saw earlier,

have nearly identical masses.
The mass of the proton is 1.67262 1027 kg.
The mass of the neutron is 1.67493 1027 kg.
The mass of the electron is 9.1 1031 kg.
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Subatomic Particles

The charge of the proton and the electron

are equal in magnitude but opposite in
sign. The neutron has no charge.

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Elements: Defined by Their Numbers of

Protons
The most important number to the identity
of an atom is the number of protons in its
nucleus.
The number of protons defines the
element.
The number of protons in an atoms
nucleus is its atomic number and is given
the symbol Z.

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Elements: Defined by Their Numbers of

Protons

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Periodic Table

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Periodic Table
Each element is identified by a unique
atomic number and with a unique
chemical symbol.
The chemical symbol is either a one- or
two-letter abbreviation listed directly below
its atomic number on the periodic table.
The chemical symbol for helium is He.
The chemical symbol for carbon is C.
The chemical symbol for Nitrogen is N.
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Isotopes: Varied Number of Neutrons

All atoms of a given element have the
same number of protons; however, they
do not necessarily have the same number
of neutrons.
For example, all neon atoms contain 10 protons,
but they may contain 10, 11, or 12 neutrons. All
three types of neon atoms exist, and each has a
slightly different mass.

Atoms with the same number of protons

but a different number of neutrons are
called isotopes.
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Isotopes: Varied Number of Neutrons

The relative amount of each different
isotope in a naturally occurring sample of
a given element is roughly constant.
These percentages are called the natural
abundance of the isotopes.
Advances in mass spectrometry have allowed
accurate measurements that reveal small but
significant variations in the natural abundance
of isotopes for many elements.

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Isotopes: Varied Number of Neutrons

The sum of the number of neutrons and
protons in an atom is its mass number and
is represented by the symbol A
A = number of protons (p) + number of neutrons (n)

where X is the chemical symbol, A is the

mass number, and Z is the atomic number.

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Isotopes: Varied Number of Neutrons

A second common notation for isotopes is
the chemical symbol (or chemical name)
followed by a dash and the mass number
of the isotope.

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Isotopes: Varied Number of Neutrons

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Ions: Losing and Gaining Electrons

The number of electrons in a neutral atom is
equal to the number of protons in its nucleus
(designated by its atomic number Z).
In a chemical changes, however, atoms can
lose or gain electrons and become charged
particles called ions.
Positively charged ions, such as Na+, are called
cations.
Negatively charged ions, such as F, are called
anions.
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Finding Patterns: The Periodic Law and the

Periodic Table
In 1869, Mendeleev noticed that certain
groups of elements had similar properties.
He found that when elements are listed in
order of increasing mass, these similar
properties recurred in a periodic pattern.
To be periodic means to exhibit a repeating
pattern.

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The Periodic Law

Mendeleev summarized these observations

in the periodic law:
When the elements are arranged in order of
increasing mass, certain sets of properties
recur periodically.
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Periodic Table
Mendeleev organized the known elements
in a table.
He arranged the rows so that elements
with similar properties fall in the same
vertical columns.

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Periodic Table
Mendeleevs table contained some gaps,
which allowed him to predict the existence
(and even the properties) of yet undiscovered
elements.
Mendeleev predicted the existence of an element
he called eka-silicon.
In 1886, eka-silicon was discovered by German
chemist Clemens Winkler (18381904), who
named it germanium.
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Modern Periodic Table

In the modern table, elements are listed in
order of increasing atomic number rather
than increasing relative mass.
The modern periodic table also contains
more elements than Mendeleevs original
table because more have been discovered
since his time.

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Modern Periodic Table

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Classification of Elements
Elements in the periodic table are classified
as the following:
Metals
Nonmetals
Metalloids

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Metals
Metals lie on the lower left side and
middle of the periodic table and share
some common properties:

They are good conductors of heat and electricity.

They can be pounded into flat sheets (malleability).
They can be drawn into wires (ductility).
They are often shiny.
They tend to lose electrons when they undergo
chemical changes.

Chromium, copper, strontium, and lead are

typical metals.
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Nonmetals
Nonmetals lie on the upper right side of
the periodic table.
There are a total of 17 nonmetals:
Five are solids at room temperature (C, P, S,
Se, and I )
One is a liquid at room temperature (Br)
Eleven are gases at room temperature (H, He,
N, O, F, Ne, Cl, Ar, Kr, Xe, and Rn)

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Nonmetals
Nonmetals as a whole tend to
be poor conductors of heat and electricity.
be not ductile and not malleable.
gain electrons when they undergo chemical
changes.

Oxygen, carbon, sulfur, bromine, and

iodine are nonmetals.

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Metalloids
Metalloids are sometimes called semimetals.
They are elements that lie along the zigzag
diagonal line that divides metals and
nonmetals.
They exhibit mixed properties.
Several metalloids are also classified as
semiconductors because of their
intermediate (and highly temperaturedependent) electrical conductivity.
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Periodic Table
The periodic table can also be divided into
main-group elements, whose properties
tend to be largely predictable based on their
position in the periodic table.
transition elements or transition metals,
whose properties tend to be less predictable
based simply on their position in the
periodic table.

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Periodic Table

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Periodic Table
The periodic table is divided into vertical
columns and horizontal rows.
Each vertical column is called a group (or
family).
Each horizontal row is called a period.

There are a total of 18 groups and 7 periods.

The groups are numbered 118 (or the A
and B grouping).

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Periodic Table
Main-group elements are in columns
labeled with a number and the letter A
(1A8A or groups 1, 2, and 1318).
Transition elements are in columns
labeled with a number and the letter B (or
groups 312).

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Noble Gas
The elements within a group usually have
similar properties.
The group 8A elements, called the noble
gases, are mostly unreactive.
The most familiar noble gas is probably helium,
used to fill buoyant balloons. Helium is chemically
stableit does not combine with other elements to
form compoundsand is therefore safe to put into
balloons.
Other noble gases are neon (often used in
electronic signs), argon (a small component of
our atmosphere), krypton, and xenon.
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Alkali
The group 1A elements,
called the alkali metals,
are all reactive metals.
A marble-sized piece of
sodium explodes violently
when dropped into water.
Lithium, potassium,
and rubidium are also
alkali metals.

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Alkaline Earth Metals

The group 2A elements are called the
alkaline earth metals.
They are fairly reactive, but not quite as
reactive as the alkali metals.
Calcium, for example, reacts fairly vigorously
with water.
Other alkaline earth metals include magnesium
(a common low-density structural metal),
strontium, and barium.

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Halogens
The group 7A elements, the
halogens, are very reactive
nonmetals.
They are always found in
nature as a salt.
Chlorine, a greenish-yellow
gas with a pungent odor
Bromine, a red-brown liquid
that easily evaporates into
a gas
Iodine, a purple solid
Fluorine, a pale-yellow gas
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Ions and the Periodic Table

A main-group metal tends to lose
electrons, forming a cation with the
same number of electrons as the
nearest noble gas.
A main-group nonmetal tends to gain
electrons, forming an anion with the
same number of electrons as the
nearest noble gas.

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Ions and the Periodic Table

In general, the alkali metals (group 1A)
have a tendency to lose one electron and
form 1+ ions.
The alkaline earth metals (group 2A) tend
to lose two electrons and form 2+ ions.
The halogens (group 7A) tend to gain one
electron and form 1 ions.
The oxygen family nonmetals (group 6A)
tend to gain two electrons and form 2 ions.
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Ions and the Periodic Table

For the main-group elements that form
cations with predictable charge, the
charge is equal to the group number.
For main-group elements that form anions
with predictable charge, the charge is
equal to the group number minus eight.
Transition elements may form various
different ions with different charges.
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Ions and the Periodic Table

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Atomic Mass: The Average Mass of an

Elements Atoms
Atomic mass is sometimes called atomic
weight or standard atomic weight.
The atomic mass of each element is
directly beneath the elements symbol in
the periodic table.
It represents the average mass of the
isotopes that compose that element,
weighted according to the natural
abundance of each isotope.
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Atomic Mass
Naturally occurring chlorine consists of 75.77%
chlorine-35 atoms (mass 34.97 amu) and
24.23% chlorine-37 atoms (mass 36.97 amu).
We can calculate its atomic mass:

Solution:
Convert the percent abundance to decimal
form and multiply it with its isotopic mass:
Cl-37 = 0.2423(36.97 amu) = 8.9578 amu
Cl-35 = 0.7577(34.97 amu) = 26.4968 amu
Atomic Mass Cl = 8.9578 + 26.4968 = 35.45 amu
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Atomic Mass

In general, we calculate the atomic mass

with the equation:

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Mass Spectrometry: Measuring the Mass of

Atoms and Molecules
The masses of atoms and the percent
abundances of isotopes of elements are
measured using mass spectrometrya
technique that separates particles
according to their mass.

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Mass Spectrometry

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Molar Mass: Counting Atoms by Weighing

Them
As chemists, we often need to know the
number of atoms in a sample of a given
mass. Why? Because chemical
processes happen between particles.
Therefore, if we want to know the number
of atoms in anything of ordinary size, we
count them by weighing.
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The Mole: A Chemists Dozen

When we count large numbers of objects,
we often use units such as
1 dozen objects = 12 objects.
1 gross objects = 144 objects.

The chemists dozen is the mole

(abbreviated mol). A mole is the measure of
material containing 6.02214 10 23 particles:
1 mole = 6.02214 1023 particles
This number is Avogadros number.
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The Mole
First thing to understand about the mole is
that it can specify Avogadros number of
anything.
For example, 1 mol of marbles corresponds
to 6.02214 1023 marbles.
1 mol of sand grains corresponds to
6.02214 1023 sand grains.
One mole of anything is 6.02214 1023 units
of that thing.
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The Mole
The second, and more fundamental, thing
to understand about the mole is how it
gets its specific value.
The value of the mole is equal to the
number of atoms in exactly 12 grams of
pure C-12.
12 g C = 1 mol C atoms = 6.022 10 23 C
atoms
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Converting between Number of Moles and

Number of Atoms
Converting between number of moles and
number of atoms is similar to converting
between dozens of eggs and number
of eggs.
For atoms, you use the conversion factor
1 mol atoms = 6.022 1023 atoms.
The conversion factors take the following
forms:

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Converting between Mass and Amount

(Number of Moles)
To count atoms by weighing them, we need
one other conversion factorthe mass of
1 mol of atoms.
The mass of 1 mol of atoms of an element is
the molar mass.
An elements molar mass in grams per
mole is numerically equal to the elements
atomic mass in atomic mass units (amu).

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Converting between Mass and Moles

The lighter the atom, the less mass in 1 mol

of atoms.
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Converting between Mass and Moles

The molar mass of any element is the
conversion factor between the mass (in
grams) of that element and the amount (in
moles) of that element. For carbon,

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Conceptual Plan
We now have all the tools to count the
number of atoms in a sample of an element
by weighing it.
First, we obtain the mass of the sample.
Then, we convert it to the amount in moles using the
elements molar mass.
Finally, we convert it to the number of atoms using
Avogadros number.

The conceptual plan for these kinds of

calculations takes the following form:

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