We are all familiar with terms for common measurements of daily objects. The most common example would be the term dozen most commonly used when referring to eggs. If asked "how many eggs are in a dozen" most people would know it means there are 12 eggs. But why do we not simply say 12 eggs?
If I asked you to picture 1,080 eggs, you would probably have a vague picture of a lot of eggs. It is much easier to think of 1,080 eggs as 90 dozen eggs. Similarly, it is much easier to imagine one mile as apposed to 5,280 feet.
When measuring or counting things at the molecular level, we deal with very LARGE numbers. It is very difficult to picture numbers in the trillions, quadrillions or larger. Because of this we use 6.02 x 10^23 (one mol) to represent a large amount of atoms, nanometers, cells, etc. For example instead of saying there are 602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 naometers in something, its much easier to say there is one mol of nanometers in something.
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