Thinking+flexibly

During chemistry this quarter, I felt one of the more difficult concepts to grasp involved moles, Avogradro's number, and number of particles in a substance. I knew how to do each of the problems and calculations accurately, but I simply did not understand what a 'mole' was and what kind of 'stuff' it measured. Though I was able to fumble through the chemistry mole packet for a few weeks, I knew I had to clarify the definition in order to fully understand everything. At first, I began by looking up the definition on Google and got: "Here is how the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) defines "mole:" > The 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. When the mole is used, the elementary entities must be specified and may be atoms, molecules, ions, electrons, other particles, or specified groups of such particles." Initially, this formal definition only confused me more but when I looked at the situation from a different perspective, I was able to gain an understanding of moles and connect it to this formal definition. "Here it is again: one mole of ANY specified entity contains 6.022 x 1023 of that entity. For example:
 * One mole of donuts contains 6.022 x 1023 donuts
 * One mole of H2O contains 6.022 x 1023 molecules
 * One mole of nails contains 6.022 x 1023 nails
 * One mole of Fe contains 6.022 x 1023 atoms
 * One mole of dogs contains 6.022 x 1023 dogs
 * One mole of electrons contains 6.022 x 1023 electrons
 * One mole of ChemTeam members contains 6.022 x 1023 poor, suffering (I mean happy, joyful) high school students"

From this perspective, I finally understood that there is no set mass or volume that determines "how much" a mole is; rather, this is determined by the number of a certain entity present. 1 mol will always equal to 6.022 x 10^23 of that substance. This, in accordance with the above definition, is the number of atoms present in 0.012 kg of carbon-12. When applied in chemistry, the definition of a mole is commonly used to refer to either the number of molecules or the number of atoms. However, it can also be used for everyday things as well, such as 1 mol of dogs, which would be 6.022 x 10^23 dogs. By thinking flexibly, I was thus able to completely understand the concept of moles and not only be able to do the problems involving moles and Avogadro's number but also be able to understand the reasoning and logic behind it. Here's a sample problem from the test involving moles that I was able to accomplish using this information: Mole problems