jimmydasaint Posted November 21, 2008 Share Posted November 21, 2008 I have grown up believing that Avogadro's number is a constant like the speed of light. However, there must have been attempts to get more accurate figures. Just out of interest, I wonder what the number is now and how it is calculated? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YT2095 Posted November 21, 2008 Share Posted November 21, 2008 I think it was established through experimental means rather than mathematically. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insane_alien Posted November 21, 2008 Share Posted November 21, 2008 yep, its experimental. and seeing as we have very accurate measurements for the mass of atoms it is a relatively simple calculation. what you do is, you take the value of 12grams (the mass of 1 mole of carbon-12 which is the accepted baseline) and divide it by the mass of 1 atom of carbon-12. this will give you the number of atoms in a mole. there will be some error but it will be tiny and generally insignificant(on the order of maybe a few thousand atoms.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swansont Posted November 21, 2008 Share Posted November 21, 2008 I have grown up believing that Avogadro's number is a constant like the speed of light. However, there must have been attempts to get more accurate figures. Just out of interest, I wonder what the number is now and how it is calculated? 6.022 141 79 (30) x 10^23 mol^-1 http://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Value?na Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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