# Question #a2afa

Apr 8, 2014

AMU, or Atomic Mass Unit, is a way of bridging the gap between grams and something so small we cant even see.

Lets take Carbon, $C$, for example. If you look on the periodic table, Carbon has the atomic mass of 12.

That means that one carbon atom weighs 12 AMU.

To make it simple, 1 Mole of Carbon is just 12 grams of it. A mole is the amount of atoms in exactly 12 grams of Carbon.

Remember, Carbon's atomic mass, or AMU, is 12.

If you want to get technical, 1 Mole equals $6.022 x {10}^{23}$ atoms of that particular substance.

That means that in 1 Mole of Carbon, or 12 grams of carbon, there are 602,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of Carbon ($6.022 x {10}^{23}$)

So if you have 1 Mole of Nitrogen, that means that you have 14 grams of Nitrogen.

If you have 4 Moles of Sulfur, you have 128 grams of Sulfur.

Now, lets do it the other way.

If you have 500 grams of Phosphorous, you have...
$\frac{500}{31} = 16.13$ Moles of Phosphorous

If you have 8,473 grams of Lead, you have.....
$\frac{8473}{207} = 40.93$ Moles of Lead