week 5 -- what is a mole?

OK, first I can't help venting a wee bit -- I am in San Ramon, in civilization, thinking I can get caught up on my chemistry homework on high speed internet, and first it was quite a project just to find a place to do it, now here I am, having signed up for a day of t-mobile for $10, but I'm in a cafe where the electrical outlets are 15 feet up the wall, so I have to try to finish while my battery lasts, and I just had this thing going on where nothing was loading, it was slower than my dial up at home but I can't vaccuum the living room while I wait! WTF????

Thanks for listening. Alright then, what exactly is a Mole? Well I think that website got me a little confused. I had thought this Mole stuff to be quite straightforward, it's an Avogadro's number of molecules, right? But this link was going on about Gram Molecular Weight, which is the molecular weight of a gas expressed in grams, and a gram molecular weight of any substance contains Avogadro's number of molecules. So, I think that a "gram molecule" is the same as a mole. I'm a little foggy about what is different about gases than everything else. I guess it's that the molar volume of gases is always the same. Anyway, I'm sticking with what I think I understood before, that you take the molecular weight of an element and multiply it by Avogadro's number, and that's how many molecules you have in that many grams....oh, dear, I'm feeling a little lost on this now. I know I understood it in class though. I'm going to stroll through everyone else's blog on this one and see if the fog clears.