Question: How many atoms are there in a lego piece?

Hussain Jaffery answered on 7 Nov 2015:

Background:

There are many different sizes of Lego bricks, ranging from small, thin ones with just one stud on top, to very large and long ones with many studs. It makes sense that large bricks have more atoms in them than the small ones in general – but just how many, exactly?

To really answer your question, you just need to know two things:
1. How much does your brick weigh? This tells you how much stuff is in there.
2. What is kind of stuff that is it made of? This is the chemical formula of the plastic from which most Lego pieces are made and this tells you how many atoms there are and how much each of them weighs. Lego bricks are made of a plastic chemical called “acrylonitrile butadiene styrene” or ABS.

Answer:

A regular 2 x 4 Lego brick weighs 2.32 grams, according to the Lego company.

The ABS molecule weighs 211.30218 grams for every 602,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules. This is known as the molar weight and every chemical has a different one. (We know this thanks to the work of a scientist called Avogadro who also wanted to know how many atoms real things had, and thanks to the rules of chemistry.)

If you divide the number of molecules by the number of grams, there are then 2,850,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules in every single gram of ABS.

For a brick that weighs 2.32 grams, multiply the above answer by 2.32. There are 6,612,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules in the brick.

Since each ABS molecule is made up of 33 different atoms that are bonded together, therefore we can arrive at the final answer. There are about 218,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in that Lego brick.