Mole | |
---|---|
Unit system | SI base unit |
Unit of | Amount of substance |
Symbol | mol |
The mole is the unit of measurement in the International System of Units (SI) for amount of substance. It is defined as the amount of a chemical substance that contains as many representative particles, e.g., atoms, molecules, ions, electrons, or photons, as there are atoms in 12 grams of carbon-12 (12C), the isotope of carbon with relative atomic mass 12 by definition. This number is expressed by the Avogadro constant, which has a value of 140857(74)×1023 mol−1, which is just over 602 sextillion. The mole is one of the 6.022base units of the SI, and has the unit symbol mol.
The mole is widely used in chemistry as a convenient way to express amounts of reactants and products of chemical reactions. For example, the chemical equation 2 H2 + O2 → 2 H2O implies that 2 mol of dihydrogen (H2) and 1 mol of dioxygen (O2) react to form 2 mol of water (H2O). The mole may also be used to express the number of atoms, ions, or other elementary entities in a given sample of any substance. The concentration of a solution is commonly expressed by its molarity, defined as the number of moles of the dissolved substance per litre of solution.