Hi it's me again! This page gives some different but very important information. If you noticed from the tab, the new information is the molar mass of each element, or the atomic weight.

Now, what does that mean? Just as you have a weight and mass, atoms do as well, despite being on a molecular level. The number tells you how much each atom of that element weighs in units of amu, or atomic mass unit. This unit is defined as 1/12 of the mass of a Carbon-12 atom.

Now, practically, that's not very helpful. Most objects are made of many atoms. Imagine saying an object weighed this many amu. That would be a very huge number.

Luckily for us, this number also tells us something more practical for our lab or everyday use. But, before we get into that, we need to define another kind of unit, the mole. Not the animal kind of mole though. A mole is a unit of stuff. Avogadro's number tells us that one mole of anything is 6.022 x 10²³ units. So, you could have a mole of atoms, of molecules, of bananas, of anything!

The molar mass (as hinted in the name) tells us how much a mole of these atoms would weigh. The units are g/mol, or grams per mole. To find the mass of a mole of compound, simply just add up the molar masses of each component of the compound!

Having such an measurement is very useful to us, as chemical equations work in terms of moles. For example, let's take the equation for photosynthesis. Sugar and oxygen become carbon dioxide and water.

C₆H₁₂O₆ + O₂ → H₂O + CO₂.

Now, we need to balance this equation to show that mass is never created or destroyed, so the same number of each element on both sides.

The balanced equation is C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂ → 6H₂O + 6CO₂.

This equation tells us that for every one mole of glucose (C₆H₁₂O₆), you need 6 moles of oxygen and it will create 6 moles of both water and carbon dioxide. With this information and molar mass, we can determine how much in grams we need of each to carry out our experiment.