Moles and amount of substance

Originally, Chemists had a problem. They needed to know how much of one substance would react
with another, and how much product they would get from it. They knew that atoms react together
in certain ratios – i.e. one atom of Oxygen reacts with 2 atoms of Hydrogen to give water, however
they couldn’t just react 2 grams of Hydrogen with one gram of Oxygen, as the atoms themselves
weigh different amounts. So, they needed to work out how they could convert from grams into
numbers of atoms, and vice versa.

Here’s the knowledge they had:

Atoms consist of protons, neutrons and electrons. Protons and neutrons are in the nucleus, and
weigh the same. Electrons weigh almost nothing – it is the number of protons and neutrons that
gives the mass of the atom.

Each element has a different number of protons in the nucleus. It has the same number of electrons
as protons – so no overall charge.

Elements are represented in the periodic table as such:

12
Mass number or relative atomic mass

Atomic
number
6
C
Mass number is the number of protons and neutrons

Atomic number is the number of protons or electrons (therefore number of neutrons is

just mass number–atomic number)

So, because one atom of Carbon has 12 protons+neutrons, and one atom of Hydrogen only has one
proton, an atom of Carbon must be 12 times heavier than an atom of hydrogen.

The real masses of atoms are too small to work with, so we give each element a relative atomic
mass that we can work with, based on how much it weighs compared to an atom of Carbon (it’s
Carbon for various reasons).

e.g. an atom of Hydrogen weighs 1/12th as much as an atom of Carbon (as explained above), so it has
a RAM of 1. An atom of Magnesium has 24 protons+neutrons – so it weighs twice as much as an
atom of Carbon, and has a relative atomic mass of 24.

From this, one gram of Hydrogen atoms must contain the same number of atoms as 12 grams of
Carbon atoms. (Another way of looking at this is if the Carbon atoms weigh 12 times as much, the
same number of atoms must be 12 times as heavy). This applies to all elements – 1g of Hydrogen
atoms, 4g of Helium, 7g of Lithium etc… all contain the same number of atoms.
The actual number of atoms we are talking about here is 60200000000000000000000!! This number
is known as the Avogadro Constant, and the Chemists decided to say that the amount of a
substance in grams that contains this many atoms is known as one mole of that substance.

The more complicated definition of the mole is: The amount of any substance which contains the
same number of constituent particles as there are atoms in 12 grams of Carbon – 12. (Again, we use
Carbon as the standard for various reasons).

And that for the Avogadro constant is: The number of constituent particles in one mole of a given
substance.

You may wonder why these definitions contain the phrase constituent particles. This means the
“building blocks” or “elementary units” that the substance is made from – not everything is made
from single atoms; some are made from molecules, in which case the molecules are the constituent
particles.

I.e. the constituent particles in a pile of Carbon are just the Carbon atoms themselves. You have a
pile of many millions of individual carbon atoms.

However, Oxygen exists in its natural state as O2 – therefore a cloud of Oxygen contains many
millions of O2 molecules. Here, the constituent particles are the Oxygen molecules, so a cloud of 32g
of Oxygen will contain one mole of Oxygen molecules, but two moles of Oxygen atoms.

These ideas are more essential at A level than GCSE, however it’s good to have an idea about it even
if you don’t fully get it.

However, you’re not always reacting pure elements with one another. Often, it will be substances
such as NaOH or CaCO3 (in which molecules of NaOH and CaCO3 are the constituent particles). So,
you need to find the relative formula mass of the compound to determine the mass of one mole –
this is just the sum of the relative atomic masses of each of the atoms in the substance.

So, for NaOH, the RFM is 40 – 23 + 16 + 1. For CaCO3, it is 40 + 12 + (3 x 16) = 100.

From this newfound understanding, the Chemists deduced the formula:

𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑠
𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑜𝑙𝑒𝑠 =
𝑅𝐹𝑀

At GCSE, this equation combined with the chemical equation of a given reaction can be used to find
out reacting masses and products.
Oxygen exists as O2 in its natural state
In a balanced chemical equation, e.g. 2H2 + O2 2H2O, the big numbers in front of each
reactant/product tell you the molar ratio that the substances react in.
i.e. this equation tells you that 2 moles of Hydrogen react with one mole of Oxygen to give 2 moles
of water.

We can combine the information given by both the formula and the equation to answer almost any
moles problem at GCSE, for example:

Sodium hydroxide reacts with Chlorine to give bleach, Sodium chloride and water. Here is the
equation for the reaction:

2NaOH + Cl2 NaOCl + NaCl + H2O

If we have 100g of Sodium hydroxide, how much Chlorine is needed to make bleach?

The equation tells us moles, so we must work in moles. We have the amount of NaOH in grams at
the moment, so we must convert that to moles.
𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑠
𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑜𝑙𝑒𝑠 =
𝑅𝐹𝑀
100
So, moles of NaOH = = 2.5.
40

The equation tells us that 2 moles NaOH react with one mole Cl2. So, to find the number of moles of
Cl2 needed, we divide moles of NaOH by 2:
2.5
2
= 1.25.

Now, all that’s left is to find the mass of Cl2 needed. The RFM of Cl2 is (35.5 x 2) = 71.

1.25 x 71 = 88.75. We need 88.75g of Chlorine to react with 100g NaOH.

For GCSE, the important bit is to be able to use this method efficiently and flexibly, and to have an
understanding of how it all works, however taking the time to understand it thoroughly will save
masses of time both this year and next.