Tomorrow, 10-23, is celebrated annually by chemists worldwide as Mole Day, based on the exponential part of the super-gigantic number 6.02 x 1023. It's called Avogadro's Number, and it counts the number of "things" in the scientific unit called the mole. The mole concept is needed because atoms and molecules are much too tiny to be counted in dozens or thousands. One heaping tablespoon of water contains 602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules! And 56 paper clips have that same number of iron atoms. The mole unit has nothing to do with the ground-burrowing mammal, but celebrations of Mole Day feature all sorts of images of the animal. (And I think it's fun to note that Mole Day comes just a few days after International Sloth Day!)
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