Thursday, December 10, 2009

It's a MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLE



6.02 x 10^23.

A big number it is. 602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Was thought up by a guy named Amadeo Avogadro. This ug-- I mean, lovely old guy.



It's a big unit of measure that's used to tell how many atoms are in a certain amount of whatever. If you had 12.01 grams of Carbon, you would have 6.02 x 10^23 atoms of Carbon, or a mole of carbon atoms. (By the way, this is an example of molar mass, which can be found on the periodic table).

A mole is biiiig. A mole of papers stacked up could travel to the Moon and back... 80 billion times.

Did I mention it was really big?

And then in class on Thursday, there were tons of hole punches on the floor (although I don't think there were a mole of them!) And we had to calculate the mass in grams of .047 of a mole of atoms in them, and our table won! Theresa, Krystina, and Marcia are hella awesome. :3

Also, Mr. Olson made a video that talks about moles!

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Polarity

Attract and repel each other like water and oil ;D

Some molecules are polar when the atoms are bonded together. This is due to a difference in the electronegativity levels. An EN difference from about 0.5 to 1.7 will make a molecule polar covalently bonded.

Polar bonds happen when there is an EN difference between 0.5 to 1.7. One atom pulls electrons closer to it than the other atom, which makes them orbit around that atom more often. This creates two poles, one slightly positive and one slightly negative. In many cases, the existence of these poles (dipoles) makes the molecule a polar (dipole) molecule. In the example of water below, the oxygen atom (red) is the negative pole; the hydrogen atoms (white) are centers of positive charge. Because a oxygen to hydrogen bond creates a polar bond, the oxygen attracts electrons to it more and creates a center of negative charge.



In some other cases, two polar bonds can cancel each other. Take the example of carbon dioxide, shown below in the right.



Because both C-O bonds are polar, they create centers of positive and negative charge. However, since the molecule's structure is linear, the bonds are at direct opposites of each other. The attractive forces of each in either direction cancel each other's out. The molecule, therefore, has no center of charge, and is not a polar molecule. To the right, CH2O has a polar bond. Since it is not canceled out by an opposite force, it is a polar molecule overall.