6.02214076×10^23

Today (October 23, 2022) is National Mole Day !!!

I certainly remember Avogadro's Number from my studies of chemistry in high school and at university. ("The number 6.02214076×10^23 was chosen so that the mass of one mole of a chemical compound in grams is numerically equal, for most practical purposes, to the average mass of one molecule of the compound in daltons.")

While I ultimately became a journalist instead of my planned medical researcher or bench chemist, I was quite fortunate in the 1990s to land a job in New York City where I could indulge my love of a topic that has interested me since I was a young kid in the 1960s playing with my chemistry set. From 1992 to 1996, I was a Reporter, Writer, Editor, and Researcher for an international weekly magazine on the financial and technical aspects of the chemical industry. This included agriculture chemicals, petrochemicals (aromatics and aliphatics), pharmaceuticals, flavors, fragrances, plastics, paints, coatings, oils, fats, waxes, surfactants, and more.

Yes, I'm a nerd ... and proud of it.

I am honored to have worked for one of the oldest publications in the United States. The magazine, initially titled "Oil, Paint, and Drug Reporter" and titled "Chemical Marketing Reporter" ("CMR") when I worked there, was first published in 1871. It was again renamed "Chemical Market Report" shortly after I left for a job as a writer for a wire service covering commodities trading (futures and options).

I still laugh at the title of my first position at CMR: Oils, Fats, and Waxes Editor. It was my job to cover such products as castor oil, grease (both yellow AND white), and carnauba wax from an industrial standpoint. I soon made the lateral move to Flavors and Fragrances Editor, then promoted to Heavy and Agriculture Chemicals Editor, and then majorly promoted to Market Research Editor.

I rank this job as my most favorite job since I became a journalist in 1982 partly because, as I still jokingly say, it made me appear smarter than I actually was. Also, my groundbreaking story on tung oil as a natural industrial lubricant in its infancy was cited in USDA and EPA governmental reports. My writings were also cited in the doctoral thesis of a university student.

While I was working for CMR, I sent a copy of the magazine to my former university chemistry teacher from the early 1980s to let him know that I never lost interested in this subject and that chemistry was my professional life at that time. He wrote back, thanking me. He told me that a teacher usually doesn't know how far his influence on his students will go. He also mentioned that he had never heard of tung oil.