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Physical and Chemical Changes Essay

Decent Essays

Shelby Brown
8/28/10
Physical and chemical changes lab essay

Changes in matter occur every day. There are two types of ways matter can be altered; physically and chemically. Physical changes do not change the composition of the matter while chemical changes occur when one or more substances turn into a completely new substance. Physical changes can be seen through an altering of the substances physical property. A substances physical property is observed and measured without changing the composition of the subject. Descriptive words that would help to identify a substance’s physical property include hard, soft, brittle, flexible, heavy, and light just to name a few. When an object goes through a physical change it …show more content…

The relationship of reactants and products is shown by a chemical equation. An example of a chemical change that one could come into contact with daily is rust. Air and iron are the reactants in this situation while rust is the product. The chemical equation for this reaction would look roughly like this, O+FE= OFE or rust. This is clearly a chemical change because you cannot reverse it meaning you cannot take rust and pull out the iron to leave air or vise versa. All chemical changes are finite. One other example of a chemical change is the burning of any substance. For example if one were to burn a sheet of paper it would create ash. This chemical change is finite because you cannot change ash back into paper. Another term to remember when considering changes chemical and physical is the law of conservation of mass. This law simply means that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Two other terms that are important when describing the properties of substances undergoing changes are extensive and intensive properties. An intensive property is a physical property of a substance that does not depend upon its size such as viscosity. Extensive properties however do depend on a substance’s size such as mass and volume. A few more important terms to keep in mind when doing a lab with chemical and physical changes are

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