Mole Day

Friday October 23rd was one of the best days I have had in a LONG time. I knew it was going to be a good day right from the start because it was MOLE DAY. For those of you who do not know about mole day, it was created as a day to celebrate chemistry. It is not to celebrate the moles found under the ground as some of you may have been thinking up to this point. A mole is a unit of measurement, and is expressed as 6.02X10^23 atoms, molecules, or ions. Moles are pretty confusing at first and when I learned about moles in AP Biology, I didn’t really understand it very much. Then later on in my chemistry class my teacher was explaining to and it made so much more sense. As extra credit for chemistry, I made a mole day t-shirt and tie died it to wear on mole day.

For chemistry we had to make a mole that looked like a specific scientist. This time it was the animal kind of mole because we were using a play on words. I sewed a mole together, and then I had to make him look like my scientist, Sir John Joseph Thomson. Sir John Joseph Thomson won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in physics and chemistry. His major area of study was the structure of an atom. We brought our moles to school and on Friday we got to look at everybody’s and vote which ones we thought were the best. The top three in each class period get extra credit so I really hope people liked mine! After that we got to play mole day games. One game was on the smart board, the object was to locate the elements listed on the periodic table as fast as possible. Another game was to get a “mole” in one while playing a little miniature golf course our teacher set up. All this sounds really like elementary school but it was just a nice break for all the hard work we had done so far in the school year.

Other than that mole day was great because I didn’t have any quizzes or tests in any of my classes which is a very rare event for me. I was supposed to have a quiz in AP U.S. History but our teacher played the old read the directions which said don’t take this quiz. Ever since I was in elementary school teachers have been handing out these quizzes which say at the top, Directions: If you are reading this do not take this quiz. Simply wait a few minutes, then get up and hand a blank quiz in. I always read the directions on quizzes and tests so it is funny to look around the room and watch almost everybody else frantically writing down their answers to the nonexistent quiz. The moral of the story was supposed to be that one must always read directions before taking tests and quizzes. I can still remember the sigh of relief I felt when I realized I didn’t have to take the quiz.