Tuesday, September 20, 2011

NaCl unit cell

This is my NaCl unit cell.

Length and Width in cm.: 4 X 4 X 4
nanometers: 4,000,000 X 4,000,000 X 4,000,000
angstroms: 40,000,000 X 40,000,000 X 40,000,000
meters: .004 X .004 X .004

Mass: .00031 grams
Moles:  5.3 e^-6 moles
Molecules in one cube of NaCl: 3.19 e18 molecules
Dimensions of a cube of NaCl: 629603nm X 629603nm X 629603nm
Number of unit cells in a cube: 4.5 e18 unit cells

Describing a mole of atoms and 10 nm

The purpose of this post is to describe 10 nm and 1 mole of atoms.

10 nanometers is a tiny measurement.  A human hair is 40,000 nanometers wide and if we blew that size up to the size of an airsoft bb, which is 1/2 a centimeter wide, that would stretch it out to 20,000 centimeters which would stretch halfway around a running track.

1 mole of atoms is the number of atoms it takes to create a certain weight.  Say you took a penny and a quarter and tried to weigh them on a bathroom scale.  You can't do that effectively so instead you take 1,000 quarters and 1,000 pennies and weighed them on the bathroom scale.  You can see a different weight for each of those weights.  1 mole equals the weight of both the pennies and the quarters at that selected number.