CCQM owes chemists a description of the concept ‘amount of substance’

Clarity about the base quantity “amount of substance” is required before (re)definition of the associated base unit mole is meaningful

“…Redefinition of the seven base units, in particular of the mole, has now been widely discussed during about 10 years in the educational literature for chemistry, especially for analytical chemistry. The numerous questions as well as the sense of confusion in this community continue to be outspoken and permanent: the reader is advised to consult the literature references given as a service to the readers of ACQUAL in previous columns in this journal [4][5][6]. One of the explanations of this confusion may be amazingly simple: The ''chemists' view'' in 1971 on the matter was formulated by physical chemists, assembled in Divison I ''Physical Chemistry'' of the IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry).…”

“…It did not reflect the different concept analytical chemists had-and still have-about the Avogadro number (unitless): rather than being a (fundamental, later called reference) constant, giving rise to a base quantity 'amount of substance' (with a unit mol). IUPAC's request at that date (2009) to CCQM (Comité Consultatif pour la Quantité de Matière-Consultative Committee for Amount of Substance) [7] to coin a new name for the base quantity concerned, is still not answered to this very day as described in [4]. Since that has not (yet?)…”

“…It must be repeated that ''the CCU and the CCQM, requested IUPAC in 2009 to present a better name for 'amount of substance''' [4]. That request was not yet answered until today-6 years later.…”

Identifying the critical components for a conceptual understanding of the mole in secondary science classrooms

“…The issue of teaching and learning the mole concept has been continually investigated and discussed in the past decades. However, it seems that many teachers and students in chemistry are still confused about this topic (De Bièvre, ; Pekdag & Azizoglu, ).…”

“…Instead of a SI unit, teachers and students perceived the mole as a mass, a volume, and/or a number (Avogadro's number) of elementary entities (Padilla, Ponce‐de‐Leon, Rembado, & Garritz, ; Staver & Lumpe, ; Tullberg et al, ). Moreover, the studies indicated that the concept of amount of substance was virtually disregarded (De Bièvre, ; Strömdahl, ). The complexity of the concept itself and the anomalous evolution of the concept in chemistry history provide some explanations for the problems and difficulties encountered in its teaching and learning (Furió et al, ; Padilla & Furió, ).…”