This past week in my chemistry class we have been going over moles and how to use it. A mole is a unit of measurement that shows the amount of something. For example, 1 mole of carbon-12 has a mass of 12g. This is also the molar mass. The molar mass is the mass of 1 mol of a substance. To find the molar mass of an element we find the mass number of the element on the periodic table. To find the molar mass in a chemical formula one needs to find the formula weight. The formula weight will be the same number as the molar mass. The only difference is that formula weight is in amu while molar mass is in grams. Here is a link of an example of how to calculate the formula weight http://chemistry.about.com/od/workedchemistryproblems/a/Molecular-Formula-Simplest-Formula-Example-Problem-1.htm .
Moles also provide a bridge from the molecular scale to the real-world. To do this one must know Avogadro's number. Avogadro's number is 6.02 x 10^23. The diagram to the right shows how to use moles. Some of the mole relationships are that 1 mole of atoms, ions, or molecules contains Avogadro's number in those particles and 1 mole of molecules or formula units contains Avogadro's number times the number of atoms or ions of each element in the compound. To understand more about moles and to figure them out here is a link to a website http://misterguch.brinkster.net/molecalculations.html.
For my literacy glog I chose to read The Poisoner's HandBook. I chose this book because it is about how forensic science started in the roaring twenties. What caught my interest in reading it, was how many poisons were not able to be detected through forensic evidence and how forensic science has changed over time. So far on what I have read, I have found out that many murders were every hard to investigate because many of the poisons were hard to find in a human body. According to the book on page 10 for example the poison chloroform, a person could take one-third of an ounce, and would die within minutes. An autopsy in the book stated ""Therefore we can establish nothing by exhuming the bodies. Mors may have given each of his victims a quart of chloroform but we couldn't prove it by an autopsy."" pg13. When I read this sentence I was fascinated on how much has changed over time. In autopsy then, one was not able to determine poisons in a body, but now with new technology one is able to determine in an autopsy how much of a poison is the body and what type of poison was consumed by the person.
