Happy Mole Day!

What is Mole Day, you may ask? Mole Day celebrates the existence of the mole. The mole, also known as Avogadro’s number, is a unit of measurement similar to a dozen. However, instead of 12, a mole of something contains 6.02 x 1023 items. You can have a mole of anything (pancakes, cats, billiard balls), but this number is especially important to chemists, as we often use a term called molar mass. This directly relates the number of moles in a compound to the mass. So it’s no wonder that Mole Day, celebrated at 6:02 on Oct. 23 (6.02 x 1023, get it?), falls in the middle of National Chemistry Week.\nThe purpose of National Chemistry week, Oct. 21-27, is to communicate the importance of chemistry in everyday life. This year’s theme, “The Many Faces of Chemistry,” highlights the variety of chemistry career and honors the diversity of the people in them. This year marks the 20th anniversary of National Chemistry Week. A congressional resolution honoring this anniversary is expected to be introduced this week, and the American Chemical Society Office of Legislative and Government Affairs will host a reception on Capitol Hill today.\nSo what does this have to do with you, a student at IU? Well, nothing really, except the fact that many people on this campus also use chemistry every day. I’m not talking about the people over in the Chemistry Building. Of course we use chemistry – we’re chemists! I’m talking about other parts of campus, parts that most students use every day.\nLet’s start on the south end of campus. The optometry school sits here, where many students get discounted eye exams. If you’ve ever had one of these, you know that the doctors will often puts drops in your eyes to dilate them, so they can examine your retinas better. These drops contain atropine, which blocks the receptors in the muscles of the eye, causing the pupils to relax and open wider. Optometry students have to have a good grounding in chemistry to understand these processes.\nNext we go to the Indiana Memorial Union. The food courts are here, which lots of students visit every day. (If you doubt this, try to get lunch there around noon.) What does this have to do with chemistry? Well, cooking involves the most basic kind of chemistry. Ingredients get mixed together, heat is applied and chemical changes occur. Without chemistry, we’d have no pizza, no processed meats, no carbon dioxide dissolved into solutions of sugar and caffeine. Just imagine finals week without Mountain Dew. Life without chemistry is scary!\nChemistry is also used daily in the School of Fine Arts, where classes contain a plethora of different chemical processes. Oil paints are made of chemical compounds of different colors, mixed with oils to stick them together. Firing clay causes chemical changes to occur, resulting in vessels and sculptures that stay hard and can be waterproof. Soldering in jewelry-making class involves the addition of heat and a chemical mixture that melds new metals together. And in the art museum, art conservationists use chemistry to clean pieces of art without damaging them, to make them look shiny and new for interested student eyes. \nLastly, let’s talk about you. Do you eat? Breathe? Drink water? Your body undergoes millions of chemical reactions every single day, allowing you to digest food, think, sleep and study. National Chemistry Week should therefore be important to all of us, scientists or not, because we all use chemistry on a daily basis. So let’s all cheer at 6:02 this evening, in celebration of the mole and of chemistry in general.\nThanks, chemistry! We wouldn’t be happy without you.