What I learned is that a mole (the scientific mole, not the ugly little rodent) is a way of measuring a element. Each element has a certain amount of matter that is within each element and to calculate you can do the above mentioned formula or you can do a different one that is more to your standards. Most common way to find the elusive mole is to take grams divided by grams per mole and since you remove both grams from the equation you are left with moles. Yet dont take my word for word. Try it.
Say you have say 20 g that needs to be converted to moles. How you would set that up is this :
1. First set up the equation as this. (g= grams, Zn= zinc, m= moles)
20gZn (we are using zinc in the equation) so 20gZn (1m/xg)
2. multiply the 20 by one which is 20.
3. this is where you need the periodic to help you. Whatever element that you have please look up the grams that is in the element. in this case 65.39. and plug said number into the x postion.
Your equation now looks like this:
20/65.39g.
4. 20 divided by 65.39 g
5. which equals the number of moles. Which in this case is 0.305 or approx m= .31.
please remember to put the element behind the gram sign. It will save you a lot of headache later on.
