system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I don't understand "moles" as in chemistry or physics(?) at all. Is it just an arbitrary number?


Thank you everyone for all the responses!!!
gpt
Yes, Avogadro's number (approx 6.02 x 10^23) is just a number. You can think of it like a dozen - you can have one molecule, two molecules, a dozen molecules, or a mole of molecules. The number was defined so that the mass of the molecule in amu (atomic mass units) is equal to the mass of a mole of those molecules in grams. So in that sense it isn't arbitrary; it's connected to the mass of the carbon atom because that's how amu are defined. But the decision to define a mole as 6.02 x 10^23 molecules was just to make math easier and not for any deep reason.