Overview of Stoichiometry

What is the definition of stoichiometry?

Stoichiometry is at the heart of the manufacturing of many of the items you use every
day. Soap, tires, fertilizer, gasoline, deodorant, and chocolate bars are just a handful of
the chemically engineered or chemically produced commodities you use. The creation
of chemically designed goods is based on stoichiometry.

What exactly is stoichiometry, though? The calculation of quantities in chemical

equations is known as stoichiometry. Stoichiometry tells us how much of each reactant
we need to get enough of the desired result in a chemical reaction. Stoichiometry is one
of the most significant and fundamental subjects in chemistry because of its real-world
applications in chemical engineering and research.

The Mole: An Overview

Which is heavier, 100 pounds or 200 pounds of feathers or 100 pounds of bowling
balls? You've probably heard this riddle before. Obviously they both weigh the same
since I told you I have 100 pounds of each. But if I have 100 pounds of bowling balls
and 100 pounds of feathers, do I have more feathers or more bowling balls? The
quantities of feathers and bowling balls would not be equal. An individual feather weighs
a lot less than a bowling ball. It would take only about 10 bowling balls to get 100
pounds whereas it would take a LOT more feathers.

When you measure quantities in moles, however, the situation is exactly opposite from
when you measure according to weight. A mole is defined as the amount of a
substance. More specifically, there are 6.02×1023 particles in a mole of substance.
Therefore, if you had 1 mole of feathers and 1 mole of bowling balls, you would have
6.02×1023 feathers and 6.02×1023 bowling balls. Now suppose you were asked the
question, "Which weighs more, 100 moles of feathers or 100 moles of bowling balls?"
The answer this time would be the bowling balls. Although there is an equal number of
both feathers and bowling balls, an individual bowling ball weighs much more than an
individual feather, and so an equal number of bowling balls would weigh more than an
equal number of feathers.
Now, let's return to the number 6.02×1023. This number is known as Avogadro's
number and you should definitely commit it to memory. You are probably wondering
why it's so large, and it does indeed look intimidating without the exponential notation:

6.02×1023 = 60, 200, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000

Although you will never have a mole of bowling balls, you will soon be calculating moles
of compounds, molecules, atoms, and ions. These representative particles are
extremely and incredibly small. That is why there are so many particles in a mole of
substance. When you appreciate just how small these particles are, 6.02×10 23 stops
seeming like such a crazy number.