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Chemistry LibreTexts

1: Properties and Measurement of Matter

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    466569
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    • 1.1: Classification and Properties of Matter
      The properties that chemists use to describe matter fall into two general categories. Physical properties are characteristics that describe matter. They include characteristics such as size, shape, color, and mass. Chemical properties are characteristics that describe how matter changes its chemical structure or composition. An example of a chemical property is flammability—a material’s ability to burn—because burning (also known as combustion) changes the chemical composition of a material.
    • 1.2: All About the Elements
      The periodic table has columns (known as families/groups) and horizontal rows called periods. On the table below, the element symbols are either one or two letters, with the first letter always capitalized. Chemical formulas are useful to indicate which elements are present and subscripts and parentheses are used to indicate the number of atoms for each element.
    • 1.4: Unit Conversions
      Units can be converted to other units using the proper conversion factors. Conversion factors are constructed from equalities that relate two different units. Conversions can be a single step or multistep. Unit conversion is a powerful mathematical technique in chemistry that must be mastered.
    • 1.5: Density
      Density is a physical property that is defined as a substance’s mass divided by its volume. Density is usually a measured property of a substance, so its numerical value affects the significant figures in a calculation. Notice that density is defined in terms of two dissimilar units, mass and volume. That means that density overall has derived units, just like velocity.
    • 1.6: Temperature
      One of the fundamental quantities in science is temperature. Temperature is a measure of the average amount of energy of motion, or kinetic energy, a system contains. Temperatures are expressed using scales that use units called degrees, and there are several temperature scales in use. In the United States, the commonly used temperature scale is the Fahrenheit scale (symbolized by °F and spoken as “degrees Fahrenheit”).


    1: Properties and Measurement of Matter is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Erin Avram.

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