Take the 2-minute tour ×  I have some trouble understanding
exactly what a mole represents. As I understand, one unit mole
is 1/12 of the mass of an atom of carbon-12 (thus it is the mass
of one nucleon?). What is a mole, then?  share|improve this
question Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… –  Qmechanic Jul 11
'11 at 17:22 $6.02214179 \cdot 10^{23}$ –  Alexander Mar 15 '12
at 9:39 add comment  4 Answers  up vote 14 down vote accepted  A
mole is nothing more than a countable number of things.
Specifically, it is approximated by 6.02 × 1023 number of
things. Hence, you can have a mole of argon atoms, a mole of
electrons, or a mole of house keys all of which contain
approximately 6.02 × 1023 of their respective items. Note that
each of these groups of things will have a different mass.  What
you are referring to as 1/12 of a 12C atoms is not a mole, but
an atomic mass unit.  share|improve this answer +1 ... it's just
like you would use the word "dozen" for the number 12. –  luksen
Jul 11 '11 at 17:57 as Luksen sa