I truly am confused by this question. It gives no specific details.
Here it is.

Calculate how long a chain of paper clips would be (in inches) if you had one mole of them.

Can someone please answer this question, or at least guide me in the direction?

Break it down into things you know.

How many atoms in a mole ?
AND
How long is an average paper clip ?

Hint: The answer is a VERY large number.

Yea I kind of figured that.
BUT
The big factor in this is that I just enrolled in chemistry..
Literally I don't know how to count atoms. How atoms are linked to moles or anything..

A Mole of atoms has a definition, what is it ?

Basically there are X atoms in a mole, what is X?

Have a read of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_(unit)

Okay.
6.02*10 to the 23?

yep that's it.



The rest is easy.
Isn't learning fun ;)

:)
What about the rest?
This is totally confusing

Well you know what value a mole is, so now multiply by the length of a paperclip.

Then BINGO...

Okay.one last thing.
I am truly asking this question
How do you count the ruler marks.
There's like 15marks and I thought a normal ruler was different.

Now there you've got me.
Normally the small marks are th's

To be honest the actual length isn't really that important.
What they are looking for here is that you have researched what a mole is.
After all paperclips come in tons of different sizes.

Okay
Thank you sooo much!

No worries.
Glad to help.

One more thing.
Okay so you helped me find the 6.02*10 23 thingy.
Now I have the measure of the paperclip.
1 4/16
Now how would I use the conversion chart to do that.
The answer has to be in inches.
Would it be a multiple step problem?

Well the paper clip is X inches

and a Mole () is

so it's simply

Inches

Make sense ?

Lol sort of.. but then again the fraction is going to get me.
Would the answer be a mixed number or fraction or just a whole number?
I'm so annoying

Hey make it easy on yourself and say the paperclip is 2 inches ;)

Did they give you the paperclip to use or was it one you found in the house.

One I found in the house.

Cool, so juts say it was 2 inches.
Makes thing easier all round.

Okay. I think I have the answer.would the answer be 12.04*10 to the 23rd?

That's it.
Remember the answer isn't the whole problem.

You need to show you whole working as I laid out in #14 above.
That's how you get the full marks.

Okay.thank you
Can you stand for another question.(chemistry worksheet but this is the last question.) not about the same question though.

Post it up on a new thread and we'll see what can be done.
I don't mind guiding, but I won't do the work for you.

Show us what you have tried and we're all good.

Okay this question is even more confusing then the first one.
Here it is.

The distance around the earth to the sun is apporximately 25,000 miles. Calculate how many times your paper clip chain could wrap around the earth.


How would you begin this problem?

Right then

I have put these two together as they are a follow on.

Is that how the question is written as it's seems slightly confused.
After all it mentions earth to sun and then earth on it's own.

Yeah.. I accidentally looked on the other problem.
It is written without the sun stuff.

The distance around the earth is approximately 25,000 miles. Calculate how many times your paper clip chain could wrap around the earth.

That's how it is really written.

OK so again break it down.

Forget actual numbers for now as this will get slightly messy.

So how many inches in a mile ?

Honestly I don't know..
I do know that there is 5280ft in a mile and there's 12inches in a foot.. so would I mutliply 5280 and 12 or something else?

Yep that's dead right.
Here's a whole write up about it: inches

Interesting in a geeky kind of way ;)

So we then need to convert the Paperclip mole inches into miles.

Okay. So there's 63,360inches in a mile. So from there would I... okay.confused

Hint:



Make sense ?

Yeah but how would the paper clips fit into all of it?

Well we know the length, in inches, of a mole of paperclips.
So we need to convert that to miles and divide by the circumference of the earth.

You following this ?
Told you it gets messy

This is one reason the SI units of measure, e.g. cm, kg, km, etc...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_units

So would I multiply the paperclips to 25,000 and divide the answer by 63360?

almost.

You need to convert the paperclips to miles.



Then divide the 25,000 by the paperclip miles above, or the other way round.

Okay I did that and it came up zero..
It started with .0001895*10 to the 23/25000

Would I take the leading zeros away or no?

You need to divied the length of your paperclips in inches by 63360 to get the length of your paperclips in miles.

THEN you divide that answer by 25,000 to get the number of times the paperclip chain will wrap around the Earth.

Once you've done that, sit back a little bit and make sure you understand why we're dividing here.

If you don't I could explain it a bit more in depth. (please ask! )

So, would I take 12.04/63360/25000?

Would the answer be .0327716*10 to the 23?

Remember the actual answer isn't all that important.
How you got there is what the teacher is looking for.

BTW, errr the number doesn't look right ;)

No, think about it, you're dividing by twice, so the answer will be somewhere close to .
Your answer is about .
It's important to use quick mental calculations like this to make sure your answer sounds sensible.