It's Mole Day Eve, and some are already celebrating it. The thing is, it's not like Groundhog Day. No, Mole Day is not about burrowing creatures.
Instead, for Mole Day, think back to your high school chemistry. Think of Avogadro's number, 6.02 x 10^23. A mole is the quantity of anything that has the same number of particles found in 12.000 grams of carbon-12. That number of particles is Avogadro's Number.
A mole of atoms is 6.02 x 10^23 atoms. A mole of anything is 6.02 x 10^23 anythings. So Mole Day celebrates Avogadro's Number.
To be exact, Mole Day occurs on October 23, between 6:02 AM and 6:02 PM. Symbolically, it starts at 6:20 10/23. Given that, you can see the tie-in to the mole.
Mole Day is an unofficial holiday for chemists in America. It originated in an article in The Science Teacher in the early 1980s. Further, Maurice Oehler, a retired high school chemistry teacher from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, founded the National Mole Day Foundation on May 15, 1991.
Using alternate date formats, some schools celebrate Mole Day on June 2 (6/02 in MM-DD format) and occasionally February 6 (6/02 in DD-MM format), rather than October 23 (10/23). The assumption is they run the "day" from 10:23 AM to 10:23 PM. Still, the official, yet unofficial Mole Day is 10/23, so get ready to count some moles.
Besides Mole Day, don't forget Pi Day and Square Root Day.
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