Monday, July 20, 2020

What are Chemical Properties of Matter?


Where are we going with this?
 The point of this deck is to give the background information and examples so that we can differentiate between substances (pure and mixtures) based on physical and chemical properties.


What are Chemical Properties of Matter?


A chemical property is any of a material's properties that becomes evident during or after a chemical reaction; that is, any quality that can be established only by changing a substance's chemical identity. 

Simply speaking, chemical properties cannot be determined just by viewing or touching the substance; the substance's internal structure must be affected greatly for its chemical properties to be investigated. When a substance goes under a chemical reaction, the properties will change drastically, resulting in chemical change.

So, what does this mean?

Chemical properties relate to how substances interact with other substances. You can't just look at something and measure a chemical property. A couple of points… Chemical properties are:
  • are any ability to produce change in the composition of matter at the molecular level.
  • can only be observed when the substances in a sample of matter change into different substances.


Since chemical properties relate to how substances interact, it is worthwhile to know when there has been a chemical reaction, when there has been some sort of chemical change to the substance or substances.

Chemical Changes

Chemical changes (which rely on chemical properties) occur, for instance, when:
  • one or more substances react with other substances and form one or more NEW substances that are different in molecular composition compared to the original substances.

  • one substance breaks down into two or more DIFFERENT substances that are different in molecular composition compared to the original substance.
So, something happens and you end up with substances that are different from what you began with. You burn some propane and end up with carbon dioxide and water, for example.


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