Amount of substance Amount of substance Amount of substance is a standard-defined quantity that measures the size of an ensemble of particles, such as atoms, molecules, electrons, and other particles. It is sometimes referred to as chemical amount. The International System of Units (SI) defines the amount of substance to be proportional to the number of entities present. The SI unit for amount of substance is the mole. It has the unit symbol mol. The proportionality constant is the inverse of the Avogadro constant. The mole is defined as the amount of substance that contains an equal number of elementary entities as there
Amount of substance replaces the term "number of moles" which should no longer be used according to IUPAC recommendation. However, confusion can arise due to the everyday usage of the term amount and the term "enplethy" has been suggested for international usage to replace amount of substance. When amount of substance enters into a derived quantity, it is usually as the denominator: such quantities are known as molar quantities. For example, the quantity which describes the volume occupied by a given amount of substance is called the molar volume, while the quantity which describes the mass of a given amount of substance is