Everything that is matter comes in 4 states: solid, liquid, gas and plasma. Each state has properties. The
dictionary´s definition of property is:
property: noun. A quality, attribute, distinctive feature of something or characteristic.
So what does that mean? It means that a property describes how an object looks, feels or acts. Liquids look, act or feel differently than solids or gases. To help you decide if something is a solid, liquid or gas, you need to know the properties of these states. We will not be exploring the properties of plasma in this lesson. But, before you need to understand what matter is made up of.
Everything that is matter is made up of small particles called atoms. Watch the following video to better understand. Watch until minute 3:30, the rest of the video is not important for this course.
dictionary´s definition of property is:
property: noun. A quality, attribute, distinctive feature of something or characteristic.
So what does that mean? It means that a property describes how an object looks, feels or acts. Liquids look, act or feel differently than solids or gases. To help you decide if something is a solid, liquid or gas, you need to know the properties of these states. We will not be exploring the properties of plasma in this lesson. But, before you need to understand what matter is made up of.
Everything that is matter is made up of small particles called atoms. Watch the following video to better understand. Watch until minute 3:30, the rest of the video is not important for this course.
Weird right?! To think that we are all made up of atoms. It is hard to imagine that something like a pencil which has no life is made up of the same particles as all living beings. Atoms are so tiny they are one-millionth the thickness of a human hair! Billions of atoms make up the period at the end of this sentence. Now that we know about atoms we can go back to discuss properties of matter.
A property is something about an object which you can observe such as its size, shape, color, smell. You use your senses to describe the properties of matter. Take this pie for example:
A property is something about an object which you can observe such as its size, shape, color, smell. You use your senses to describe the properties of matter. Take this pie for example:
What could we say about it using our five senses?
You could describe the cake as being large, yellow, round, having the flavor of a lemon and smelling sweet. These are the properties of this pie.
There are other properties of matter such as if an object will bend or not, if it will sink or float, its volume, compression or how the particles behave.