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What do you get when you mix moles, apples, avocados, rams and an otherwise bored tutor together in a test tube and shake well? You'll get this as a part of the students' notes...



The tooth refers to Molar Volume, if you didn't get it at first glance...

I spent the better part of the morning making this chart, and hopefully it would be put to good use.

Chapter 3 of SPM Chemistry can be quite a drag to teach and learn, since it is very mathematical and the students have to, first, understand all the new and wonderful Chemistry terms, and secondly, get their minds around the reason why it's divided in one way and multiplied in the reverse... and I hate saying Avogadro's Number, 6.02 x 10^23 becomes quite long when read out in words.

And I have very bad memories of how much I struggled with the relative atomic mass numbers when I first started out. It seemed the reference book I was using back then conveniently left out the R.A.M.s, (I'll admit, that I was a bit kiasu and started reading Chemistry and Physics during the December holidays). I thought I had to memorise the R.A.M.s and the first 20 elements of the Periodic Table, which I did...

...and I didn't even have charts like this to help me out, it wasn't until much later that I realised how useful such a chart would have been when I just started out. So, I'm helping them out by making a colourful, and a bit humourous chart, so they can get the whole thing better, faster and with less pain.

Oh, I love to use the analogy of the Dozen Apples as the mole... since 12 is an easier number to relate to (and, say out) than 6.02 x 10^23, so my Number of Particles is represented by the apple, and by the way, they look like a lattice when they're arranged in the chart, making them really do look like particles.

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