Physical Matter Properties - Chemical Matter Properties - Concept

This segment let's go ahead and discuss the physical and the chemical properties of matter. So remember that the law of the conservation of matter reminds us that matter is neither created nor destroyed. So however much matter you have at the beginning of your reaction is how much you matter will have at the end.

So let's remind ourselves that matter is anything that has mass and occupies space, so you and I we are matter and then a property is any characteristic that allows us to recognise a particular type of matter and distinguish it from other types. So within that there are these two concepts of physical properties and chemical properties. So you shouldn't get discouraged and you should practice this numerous times trying to distinguish between what's a physical property of matter and a chemical property of matter definitely takes some time and some diligence.

So a physical property of matter is defined as being measured without changing the identity and composition of the substance versus a chemical property describes the way a substance may change or react to form other substances.

So let's kind of discuss really quickly what are some types of physical and chemical properties. So physical properties are things like color, odor, density, melting and boiling points and hardness especially if you're talking about a metal. Versus a chemical property is something like flammability and digestion. So when you eat food, how it digest in your stomach, that's the change from a food being solid to you chewing it and then it becoming whatever it becomes in your stomach to become digestible, that is a chemical property of matter.

So within physical and chemical properties of matter, there are these other two types of properties that are important to note as well and those are intensive and extensive properties. Again this will take some time to figure out how to distinguish between what's an intensive property and what's an extensive property.

So an intensive property is used to identify a substance. So the more important part is that it does not depend on the size of the system or the amount of material that that's in the system. So an example of that is density. Density is the same no matter of a substance, no matter how much or how little of it you have. So an extensive property actually does depend on the quantity of the sample and it relates to the amount of the substance that is actually present. So examples of that are mass and volume.

So I encourage you to find a couple of examples and test yourself with being able to distinguish between what constitutes a physical and a chemical property and what constitutes an intensive and an extensive property.