How many atoms of carbon are in one cookie?

Answer 1

assuming you know the exact chemical composition of a cookie (which I don't) you can find this using Avogadro's number.

Lets say the cookie is composed completely of glucose (not a very tasty or nice looking cookie). The molecular formula for glucose is C6H12O6, therefor for every glucose molecule in that cookie there is 6 carbon atoms.

Lets say we have a 100g cookie composed completely of glucose, we can find the number of moles of glucose by dividing the mass of the cookie (taken to be enitrely made of glucose) by its molar mass (approximately 180 g/mol, which can easily be calculated from the Periodic Table).

So #moles=100g/180g/mol = approx 0.556 moles of glucose are in that gross cookie.

Using Avogadros number we know that there is 6.022x10^23 particles per mole, so

# molecules of glucose in 0.556 moles = (6.022x10^23/mol)(0.556mol)= 3.35x10^23 molecules of glucose in the cookie.

But for each molecule of glucose there is 6 carbon atoms so

6(3.35x10^23)= 2.01x10^24 carbon atoms.