You may take this as either a theoretical model (like an interactive website) or literal (although I prefer literal, just for giggles).
To get one mole of oranges would create a gigantic orange mass roughly the size of planet earth, thus it would be too big to create on planet earth, but there is more than enough space in the universe...
With the simple matter of destroying all the other planets in orbit around a nearby solar system, you could create a sort of working example of the size of one mole of... everything. Rice grain asteroids in the measurement of one mole, one mole of human corpses, one mole of pencils, a mole of custard, and so on.
A useless pursuit to the masses who don't do chemistry, but a wonderful demonstration of moles to the rest of us students.
(And don't bother asking me where the heck I'd get enough oranges, pencils, human remains, etc. Not from Wal-Mart or Coles, obviously. Or maybe...)
The question that I really want to know an answer to is whether IF somehow we got a mole of oranges up there and IF it stayed up there (via a net or something like that?) would it form an atmosphere or something similar?-- froglet, Mar 23 2006 Hm, what, something like this? http://www.skinsite...arks%20nevi%202.gif [DrCurry, Mar 23 2006] Hm, or, something like this? http://www.moles-mo...allery/moles-01.jpg [skinflaps, Mar 23 2006] (??) or um, something like this? http://images.googl...en%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 23 2006] Mole Day http://www.newton.d...hem00/chem00127.htmMake sure you do it on the 23rd Oct. [zen_tom, Mar 24 2006] For Froglet http://dictionary.r...e.com/search?q=bongBong - see last definition [jonthegeologist, Mar 24 2006] or um, what about this? http://www.mexgrocer.com/2500.html [NotTheSharpestSpoon, Mar 24 2006] er, could mean this? http://en.wikipedia...nnel_boring_machine [TheLightsAreOnBut, Aug 15 2007] Potassium in earth's core? http://www.agu.org/.../2003GL018515.shtml [ldischler, Aug 15 2007] Mola mola http://www.mola-mol....com/image/mola.jpg [normzone, Jun 03 2009] The Manassa Mauler http://en.wikipedia...wiki/Manassa_MaulerNot anything to do with Jack Dempsey either then? [DrBob, Jun 04 2009] [froglet] You are supposed to be concentrating in chemistry class, not sucking on bongs. Report to the Principal's office.-- ConsulFlaminicus, Mar 23 2006 Wouldn't this mess up the garden?-- skinflaps, Mar 23 2006 [Consul] It's 10:05pm here, why on earth would I want to be in chemistry at this time of night?
And what on earth are 'bongs'?-- froglet, Mar 23 2006 "The question that I really want to know an answer to is whether IF somehow we got a mole of oranges up there and IF it stayed up there (via a net or something like that?) would it form an atmosphere or something similar?"
Most likely, yeah. These things would be rotting away, giving off all sorts of noxious gases.-- DrCurry, Mar 23 2006 I thought this had to do with teeth.-- DesertFox, Mar 23 2006 No, I mean as in the Chemical Concentration.
As in 2H(little 2)SO(little 4) would mean that you had two moles of sulphuric acid!-- froglet, Mar 24 2006 The things that I'm not talking about:
Moles the animal Moles the little brown spot that people have on their skin Moles the condiment (or whatever it is that's in [NTSS]'s link) Moles the little mole keeper away thing
I am talking about the measurement of concentration or whatever you call it in chemistry.
*Slams head against keyboard*-- froglet, Mar 24 2006 I'm glad to see your grasp of the concept and use of the mole within chemistry is just as hazy as mine. In fact your orange example is probably the most application I have come across.-- wagster, Mar 24 2006 Ooooh! Righto froggy! Now I'm with you! Mole the *number*!
Well, if you got a mole of oranges up into space in a ball shape, it would have about the same mass as Venus. It would have its own gravity, so the oranges on the surface wouldn't just drift off away from the main body. It would be a planet, albeit one with a unique chemistry - in a short period of time the pressure and temperature of the mass would cause all the metalic elements present to migrate to the core. I guess that pretty soon it would be a cute little blue water world.
For it to survive very long, you would have to give it some angular momentum tangental to the star so that it could orbit rather than just get pulled in to its destruction.
As for atmosphere, that would depend on how close to the star you were and how big the star was. Atmospheres are easily stripped off light planets and planets close to stars and planets orbiting big stars.
Lastly, you realise that to create a mole of everything, you would need a mole of universes.... so you'd better not speak ill of burrowing moles for they are the ones who could ask the white mice to create all that for you. (HHGTtG)-- ConsulFlaminicus, Mar 24 2006 Unfortunately [Consul] I am now feeling inclined that given half an opportunity, I would very much like to create a mole of moles - no offence to their relatives, the white mice.-- froglet, Mar 24 2006 You could make such a molecule on a table-top scale using salts or other crystalline compounds. Just be a matter of finding the right compounds with the right densities to give realistic relative volumes of the various planets.
As to your oranges question. An average one weighs about 0.2 kg, so a mole of them would weigh about 1.2 x 10E23 kg, which is about 2 times the weight of the moon. (Thanks for the 0.2g/kg correction.)-- iamanangelchaser, Nov 29 2006 I imagine a thin atmosphere consisting mainly of vapourised orange juice and orange zest. At the poles, this might freeze into glaciers of frozen orange juice. The atmosphere would be mainly water vapour, which might set off a runaway greenhouse effect. There would be strange minerals formed by compression deep in the crust. The chances are, there would also be life, consisting initially of bacteria and fungi. There could be orange juice volcanoes. I don't think it would be hot inside because oranges aren't very radioactive. Over millions of years, the mould would probably evolve into new forms adapted to living at the bottom of the sea, which would not be saline, floating in the atmosphere and so forth. There could be lots of orange trees, and in fact the only plant species would initially be the orange tree. The soil would be very acidic, so only orange pips which could survive in acidic soil would survive. Eventually the orange trees would evolve into new species, adapted to different environments, but initially they would only survive in tropical and warm temperate climates. At the beginning, the animals would consist of common orange pests such as mites and mealybugs, and maybe nematodes. Any other animals would evolve from them.
After countless aeons, intelligent life forms would evolve. These would found a fiercely protestant civilisation, and would be convinced that the entire world belonged to the United Kingdom.
On another matter, i once lost several night's sleep over my wife's characterisation of me as wondering what would happen if the Moon were made of platinum. I later shared this question with a friend and he didn't get any useful work done for the rest of the day. He should be here.-- nineteenthly, Nov 29 2006 They would never know the scourge of scurvy.-- bungston, Nov 29 2006 I can't imagine they would ever evolve the ability to synthesise Vitamin C. Then again, it's very unstable and they might have to mine it. Not a good environment for cold viruses perhaps.-- nineteenthly, Nov 29 2006 0.2g for an orange - surely it's 0.2kg
A mole of oranges would have 10 times the mass of the Moon or about 1/10th the mass of the Earth.
We'll have to think of a catchy name though - how about "The Orange"?-- DenholmRicshaw, Nov 29 2006 This would make it about the same mass and colour as Mars. If the Moon is made of green cheese, maybe Mars is made of oranges.-- nineteenthly, Nov 29 2006 6.19 x 10 toothy 23-- bulb, Nov 30 2006 explosive orange vapor-- bulb, Nov 30 2006 depends on wut yer definition of up is-- bulb, Nov 30 2006 A scholarly study on Spanish students adviced 'not to teach the mole concept to teens under the age of 18, on average', because of their 'not being prepared to operate with such an abstraction yet'. Won't add any link claiming it's true and published.
By the way, you can ONLY measure moles of PURE substances. 1 mole of citric acid (found at about 8% dry mass in oranges) weighs 192 grams. 1 mole of hemoglobin (O2 / CO2 carrier protein tetramer) weighs about 68 kg.
For everything else, dial Avogadro's number, 6.0 22E +23-- mayihave, Aug 13 2007 Have to agree with [MayIHave], but nonetheless 6.022E23 oranges sounds like rather a fine planet to create.
I rather suspect the oranges near the middle might be rather squashed. Indeed, I'm having fun merely considering how to make a machine capable of gradually applying the pressure that would prevail in the centre of such a planet to some oranges, with a view to investigating the phase changes they would undergo at various depths within the planet.-- Cosh i Pi, Aug 14 2007 I think a mole of moles would be both educational and interesting to look at - though the ones in the middle would probably be a bit uncomfortable.-- zen_tom, Aug 14 2007 If we have a mole of moles, can we also have an Avogadro of Avocados?-- TheLightsAreOnBut, Aug 14 2007 Only a relatively small number of them would be recognizably Avocados. And none of them would be recognizably Avogadro's Avocados.-- Cosh i Pi, Aug 14 2007 How deep can you pile Avocados before the ones on the bottom become guaca-mole?-- Galbinus_Caeli, Aug 14 2007 I'd like to see a mole of punsters, which would be so massive that no pun could escape.-- ldischler, Aug 14 2007 A black mole?
Hey, if we keep adding more puns to this, we might just reach critical mass....-- zen_tom, Aug 14 2007 And then we can all go cycling around London.-- Cosh i Pi, Aug 14 2007 Will a mole Sun still be able to make fusion so it will continue to shine?-- the great unknown, Aug 14 2007 6.022E23 Sun masses is definitely black hole stuff.-- Cosh i Pi, Aug 14 2007 [+] for [ninteenthly]'s vision of the orange planet.
//I don't think it would be hot inside because oranges aren't very radioactive.// Yes but over time all the trace heavy metals would migrate to the center.-- BunsenHoneydew, Aug 14 2007 //I don't think it would be hot inside because oranges aren't very radioactive.// They don't need to be very radioactive - even just a little bit radioactive would be enough to make a planet hot. There's plenty of potassium 40 in oranges - I haven't done the calculations, but I wouldn't be surprised if the radioactivity of an orange was comparable to the mean radioactivity of the Earth's interior.-- Cosh i Pi, Aug 15 2007 //I haven't done the calculations//I'll get it started. One mole of medium sized oranges would have a mass 38 times less than the earth, and would contain about 1.23E14 curies of 40K. (A banana planet would be substantially more radioactive.)-- ldischler, Aug 15 2007 All of these fruit (and indeed animal) based planets would have a high (70ish) percentage of water - which might quickly boil off if the density of the remaining matter isn't enough to sustain a water-vapour atmosphere - I suppose they could be icy.-- zen_tom, Aug 15 2007 And since the earth has more than ten times the potassium concentration, the orange planet would definitely be frozen over.-- ldischler, Aug 15 2007 [DesertFox] made me consider a planet made from an Avogadro's number of back-teeth. Yep - a mole o'molars.-- zen_tom, Aug 15 2007 [ldischler] Whether it would be frozen over mainly depends on its distance from its sun, and what the sun's like. It's the core temperature that's determined by any radioactivity.
It wouldn't be as hot as the core of the Earth, but it would still be pretty hot - just guessing, not done the calculations.
Incidentally, I'm not sure how much potassium the Earth has - the concentrations in crustal rocks and the sea are well known, and we've got some evidence about concentrations in the upper mantle, but I don't think we've any way of knowing the concentrations in the lower mantle and core.-- Cosh i Pi, Aug 15 2007 [cosh], could send a mole (see link) to have a look?-- TheLightsAreOnBut, Aug 15 2007 Would such a universe fit in with big bang theory or creationalism? 'And on the eighth day God said "Let There Be Oranges"....?-- the dog's breakfast, Aug 15 2007 [cosh] The core temp doesn't directly determine the surface temp., but it does have a lot to do with out-gassing, and without that such a small planet would eventually lose its atmosphere and freeze over. As for K in the earth's core, there's not much as it isn't soluble in iron/nickel.-- ldischler, Aug 15 2007 [idischler] Agreed on the outgassing, although the planet would still be hot on the surface if it was close enough to the sun, regardless of any atmosphere.
As to K in the Earth's core: I'm not convinced, although of course your suggestion does support my case. The reason I'm not convinced is that I don't think we know very much about solubility of anything in anything else at the kind of pressures prevailing in the Earth's core. On the assumption that solubilities don't change much as pressure gets very high, then you're right - and there won't be much uranium or thorium in the core, either. On the same assumption, all three would be present in quantities comparable to those in surface basalt in the mantle, upper and lower most probably - which is indeed a bigger source of heat than the potassium in oranges would be, but not by a very large factor.-- Cosh i Pi, Aug 15 2007 I tried this idea today with the home ed chemistry group and it worked really well. Thanks, [froglet]!-- nineteenthly, Jun 03 2009 I would love to see plausible theories on what the planet earth 'might' have been made out of, a plant or candy bar that has the makings of a planet in it. Convoluted explanations involving atmospheric stripping and cosmic impacts encouraged.-- WcW, Jun 03 2009 Well, this morning we had an orange, a grape and a tomato. The orange had already been done here. The grape provoked the comment that there would be insufficient gravity to hold the juice, which would boil and it would tend towards becoming a heap of sultanas or raisins, though clearly that would just be the beginning. Concerning tomatoes, gravity would be higher and the liquid would start out high in ethanoic acid. That would mean acidic soil, as it would with the oranges, but in the case of oranges, i realised today that the atmosphere would be high in limonene, at least for a while, which is a really useful way of linking today's session with the optical isomer thing i'm going to do in two weeks time. Imagine an inferior conjunction between a planet made of oranges and one made of lemons. The opposite polarisations of the light would mean the atmospheres would cancel out the sunlight. Or would it?-- nineteenthly, Jun 03 2009 I'm thinking potatoes actually.-- WcW, Jun 03 2009 Chemists do it with moles-- simonj, Jun 04 2009 Potatoes would be ironic since a lot of asteroids look like them.-- nineteenthly, Jun 04 2009 random, halfbakery