Time to dig out the mole

Think of moles as a "chemist's dozen". Just as 12 eggs is a dozen eggs, 6.02 × 1023 eggs is a mole of eggs. 6.02 × 1023 molecules of oxygen is a mole of oxygen.
The number of grams in a mole is different from substance to substance. If you're like most students, it's this that's confusing you. Picture it this way: a dozen elephants have a different weight than a dozen rabbits- but in each case, you have a dozen animals. Similarly, a mole of oxygen gas has a different weight than a mole of water- but in each case, you have 6.02×1023 molecules.

Why use moles? You often want to know how many molecules you have in a sample of a substance. Counting the molecules individually would be completely impractical. Even if you had a way to see the individual molecules, there are just too many, even in a tiny sample. Moles were defined to solve the problem of counting large numbers of molecules. With moles, you count the number of molecules in the sample by weighing it.