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  Home > JCE Print > Journal of Chemical Education > Issues > 2000  > August  >
In the Classroom
Applications and Analogies
A Drop in the Ocean
Damon Diemente
Trinity School, 101 West 91st Street, New York, NY 10024

Cover
August 2000
Vol. 77 No. 8
p. 1010

Abstract
Teachers of high-school chemistry customarily use calculations done as in-class exercises or as demonstrations to impress their students with the enormity of Avogadro's number and the concomitant miniscularity of atoms and molecules. This article presents and works out one such calculation. We are asked to imagine filling the entire volume of all the oceans on Earth a scoop at a time, using a 100-mL beaker as a ladle. We find that the beaker holds 170 times as many water molecules as there are beakerfuls of water in the oceans.
More Information
*  Citation
Diemente, Damon. J. Chem. Educ. 2000 77 1010.
*  Keywords
Stoichiometry; Teaching / Learning Aids; Atomic Properties/Structure; Introductory/High School Chemistry
*  History
Created:
Last Updated:
July 5, 2000
April 15, 2005
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