On Monday 21st October, Year 11 took part in a series of chemical puzzles and tasks in honour of “Mole Day”. This event occurs across the world as close as possible to 6:02 on the 23rd October (10/23 in American notation) to commemorate Avogadro’s number – 6.02 x 1023, and its associated unit – the mole.
At OHS, the first challenge in our Mole Day was to find chemistry-related clues around the school on a ‘mole hunt’. After the students had unearthed all these clues, via much spirited dashing around, they had to use their clues to solve problems. These problems in turn led to the final challenge: an anagram of one of Avogadro’s numerous first names. These puzzles ranged from the dingbat HIJKLMNO (H2O) to a crossword.
The second challenge the girls faced was to create a sculpture from a mole of aluminium (27g). Most of the resulting sculptures were figurative representations of the mole (the furry type), and all showed an impressive creativity, with some including whiskers and, in one case, sunglasses. The students thoroughly enjoyed the activities and this was a lovely way to round off a term investigating amount of substance in Chemistry.
