Amount of substance in use in chemical engineering in the United States is the pound-mole, having the symbol lb-mol. One pound-mole is . When quoting an amount of substance, it is necessary to specify the entity involved, unless there is no risk of ambiguity. One mole of chlorine could refer either to chlorine atoms, as in 58.44 g of sodium chloride, or to chlorine molecules, as in 22.711 liters of chlorine gas at STP. The simplest way to avoid ambiguity is to replace the term "substance" by the name of the entity or to quote the empirical formula. For example: Amount of substance
Hypothetical chemical compound Hypothetical chemical compound A hypothetical chemical compound is a chemical compound that has been conceived of, but is not known to have been synthesized, observed, or isolated (identified or shown to exist). Some hypothetical compounds cannot form at all. Others might turn out to be highly unstable, decomposing, isomerizing, polymerizing, rearranging, or disproportionating. Some are thought to exist only briefly as reactive intermediates, or in vacuum (helium hydride ion...). Some cannot hold together due to steric hindrance (tetra-"tert"-butylmethane) or bond stress (tetrahedrane...). Some have no known pathway for synthesis (hypercubane...). Some "parent compounds" have not been or cannot be isolated,