Ok yeah yeah whatever, today is Pi Day. Everybody loves Pi Day, whoop-de-doo. Daron Aronofsky loves Pi Day! Nerdy webcomics! Talk show hosts! Otherwise-boring math majors who can only command the attention of a room by reciting 100 digits of Pi love Pi Day.

Pi Day is for trendy, nerd-chic poseurs. Circles are pretty cool I guess, if that’s what you’re into. But if you’re tired of the runaround, turn your attention to Avogadro’s Constant, roughly 6.023×10^23. We also refer to this number as 1 mole. What’s special about that number? It correlates the number of atoms or molecules in a substance to its mass. It is nothing less than a bridge between mundane experience and the very building blocks of our universe.

Take the atomic weight of any element and convert it to grams: You now have 1 mole of that element, and in that mass there are about 6.023×10^23 atoms in it. 12 grams of Carbon gives you one mole of Carbon; 196 grams of Gold will give you 1 mole of Gold. In 1 mole of Carbon or Gold you have 6.02×10^23 atoms, each. How cool is that? It works for compounds too. With Avogadro’s Constant we can efficiently combine large amounts of chemicals to get reactions without a lot of leftover reagents. Chemical engineering would be IMPOSSIBLE without the mole. Still impressed with your little circles? I think not.

So on October 23, from 6:02am to 6:02pm celebrate Mole Day with the real intellectuals, and leave Pi Day for the sheeple. MOLE DAY ROCKS!