For the past 15 years October 23 has been recognized and celebrated as National Mole Day - not to celebrate the furry ground-dwelling creature, but to pay homage to chemistry. Mole Day began as a way to create interest in chemistry and to celebrate Avogadro's Number, a unit of measurement in chemistry, according to the National Mole Day Foundation's Web site.
To celebrate Mole Day, Ball State University's chemistry club, Student Affiliates of the American Chemical Society, will be hosting a cookout from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the West Campus and Picnic Shelter, said Lindsey Huber, vice president of SAACS.
"We're really excited," she said. "It's not something that people normally celebrate, so we're excited to share this day with people that wouldn't normally know about it."
Tickets for the cookout are $5. Door prizes will be given away and there will be a drawing for $1,000 worth of gas cards, Huber said.
While the group was started in the '60s, it has recently started becoming active, Nathan Evans, president of SAACS, said.
"We won't have experiments there, it's basically just a cookout," he said. "It's just a student gathering where people can come out and have fun; giving gas away is an added bonus."
Mole Day is officially celebrated from 6:02 a.m. to 6:02 p.m. on Oct. 23 because Avogadro's Number is 6.02 x 10^23, NMDF's Web site said.
Avogadro's Number allows scientists to use a substance's atomic mass to determine the number of molecules or atoms held in that substance.
The cookout is being partially used to raise money for Science Day on the Greenway, Evans said.
Science Day on the Greenway is one of the club's biggest events and occurs second semester, he said.
A community outreach project, Science Day strives to engage children and parents in hands-on science activities.
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