Wisconsin, Oct 23 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Mole Day is celebrated among the chemists in North America on October 23, between 6:02 AM and 6:02 PM. This particular time frame in which it is celebrated makes the date 6:02 10/23 in the American style of writing dates. The time and date are derived from the famous Avogadro constant, which is approximately 6.02×1023, defining the number of particles (atoms or molecules) in a mole, one of the seven base SI units.

The idea for an official Mole Day came from an article in the magazine The Science Teacher in the early 1980s. Maurice Oehler, who is a retired high school chemistry teacher from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, was really impressed by this published article of the ‘Mole Day’ and he founded the National Mole Day Foundation (NMDF) on May 15, 1991.

Many schools in United States, South Africa, Australia and in Canada have caught on to this idea, and celebrate Mole Day as a way to get their students interested in chemistry, with various activities and events related to chemistry.

There is an official website to from this day, http://www.moleday.org/ which gives information about the significance of this day and runs lots of activities also on the occasion of Mole Day. It explains Avogadro’s number as “For a given molecule, one mole is a mass (in grams) whose number is equal to the atomic mass of the molecule. For example, the water molecule has an atomic mass of 18, therefore one mole of water weighs 18 grams. An atom of neon has an atomic mass of 20, therefore one mole of neon weighs 20 grams. In general, one mole of any substance contains Avogadro’s Number of molecules or atoms of that substance. This relationship was first discovered by Amadeo Avogadro (1776-1858) and he received credit for this after his death.”