National Mole Day

When Celebrated

Always on October 23rd

Gifty-ness

About the Holiday

Mole Day is not to celebrate the small burrowing creature. Instead, Mole Day commemorates Avogadro's Number (6.02 X 10^23), a basic measuring unit in chemistry used to express the amount of a chemical substance. One mole is defined as the number of basic entities (atoms, ions, molecules) that is equal to the number of atoms in 12 grams of pure carbon. In terms of molecules, a mole of molecules will have a mass (in grams) that is equal to the average atomic mass of the molecule.

Interestingly, Mole Day is celebrated between 6:02am and 6:02pm. This is because 6:02 10/23 closely resembles the 6.02 x 10^23 constant.

This holiday originated the early 1980s via an article in The Science Teacher. In 1991, a the National Mole Day Foundation was established by high school chemistry teacher, Maurice Oehler. The foundation's purpose is get people, especially students, interested in chemistry.

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