University of Maryland students will celebrate moles Monday, but not the furry rodents.

Students who have ever taken a chemistry class may be familiar with moles — not the furry brown ones that burrow into the ground, but the unit of measurement used to quantify large amounts of very small objects.

A mole is a unit of measurement equal to 6.022 x 10^23, also called Avogadro’s number. One mole of water molecules could easily fit in your hand. However, one mole of sand could fill a country.

Avogadro’s number is the reason Oct. 23 is special to some chemistry students; 10^23 corresponds to the date.

The University of Maryland’s chapter of the American Chemical Society will host a Mole Day celebration Monday. At least six other campus science clubs will participate in the celebration held in the campus’ chemistry building.

The celebrations will include tabling, demonstrations by each organization, a competitive trivia quiz and other activities.

Sophomore biochemistry major Seth Cohen, president of this campus’ American Chemical Society chapter, said Mole Day will promote the sciences, not just chemistry, and attract a variety of science-minded students.

“I was fortunate to go to a great high school where there was a lot of sciences, but [in some places], especially in this area, a lot of kids don’t have those opportunities,” Cohen said. “One thing our chapter is trying to push is community outreach so trying to engage younger kids in science, and a great way to do that is engage older kids in science.”

American Chemical Society member Nick Viggiano said the event is a good way to celebrate chemistry with other students that enjoy chemistry.

“It builds a sense of community and brings people together,” said Viggiano, a freshman chemical engineering major.

The event is a great way for students to meet people on the campus and find out what they can do with campus science organizations, said junior biochemistry major Sunny Jung, the president of the campus chapter of the Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers, which is one of the groups participating in Mole Day.

This is not the first year that the student chapter of the ACS has hosted this event, and it won’t be the last — Cohen said they hope to make it an annual celebration.

“There is still a tiny bit of a stigma toward the chemical sciences,” Cohen said. “A lot of people are scared of chemistry, they think of it as a not fun thing to do, so I want to turn that on its head a bit.”