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This book (How much is a million by David Schwartz) tries to give children a "feel" for the value of a million. For example, how high would a million people sitting on each others shoulders be,etc? I would like to change it in my class to the value of the mole, 6.02E23 (Avogadro's number) or 602000000000000000000000 of something. I was orginally going to do this activity when I am working on the concept of the mole. Instead, I will use it during the beginning of the year when I do dimensional analysis (a way of doing math where units canceling determine what math is done to set of numbers). So I will have them do this activity as a final review for dimensional analysis.
I will break the class into groups (2 or 3 students) and each group will get a different candy bar. They will determine the length of the candy bar using a ruler (will need to determine number of significant figures using scale on ruler). Using dimensional analysis, the group needs to determine how many times from here to the moon and back you would need to do to get the length of 6.02E23 pieces of the candy.
Mole of a Good Time Lab (Dimensional Analysis review)
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