I'm a 56 year old Irish teacher - though not of any Science, so no homework involved here. Nothing in my textbook "Modern Chemistry", helps with this.
A mole of carbon is 12 grams of graphite and is approximately the volume of the lead in my pencil.A mole of nitrogen is about 14 grams, but it occupies a space of a litre, and it is a gas. Puzzling to me why we see
(a) extraordinary rise in volume occupied and (b) why the change in matter.
If the volume change helps explain the change in matter, how do we account for the dramatic change in volume? After all, a mole of oxygen, nitrogen's neighbour, has the SAME volume as a mole of nitrogen, and yet the net change in the fundamental number of particles between 1 mole nitrogen, to 1 mole oxygen, is precisely the same as net difference between 1 mole carbon, 1 mole nitrogen.
Thanks for your patience in advance.