Some musings by me on the nature of the mole...

During some correspondence with a friend, and being such the fount of science wisdom that I am known to be, I was once asked by a friend:

Why a "mole"? Why do we call 6.022 x 10^23 particles a "mole" of particles? Does anyone have an explanation of the origin of the word?

To which I replied:

According to the Dictionary of Standard Measurements Throughout the Ages (which I found in the back of our libary), a mole, that is the skin aberration, was once commonly believed to be the same size on everyone. At the time, in medieval England, a mole was used to measure small amounts of powder, usually, as in "I'll have a mole of iocaine powder". I think the book said the actual standard was the size of the king's mole. This is similar to our usage of the units "foot" and "hand".

However, now in the scientific age, we know that all moles are not the same size and vary within 10% of each other! However, these were different times, and people were foolish. The documented size of the king's mole as found in some manuscripts in a monastery was very close to the volume occupied by a mole (that is 6.02e23 molecules) of boron (a very popular element in those days). So in order to honor the British royalty (as this fact was discovered by a British chemist) the unit of measurement was deemed a mole. Hope this clears things up. And the reason we abbreviate "mole" as "mol" is simple: We MUST abbreviate, right, since we are scientists. However, "m" is taken for meter, "ml" is more or less taken for milliliter, and "mo" is taken for mother, as in "i saw som'boy kissin' yo' mo'!" So the next best thing is "mol" QED.

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