Chapter 1: Specific Chemical Properties

Vocabulary flashcards defining fundamental chemical terms, Dalton's atomic theory concepts, and chemical laws covered in Chapter 1: Specific Chemical Properties.

Atom

The smallest and invisible building block of matter that retains the specific chemical properties of an element.

Element

A pure substance composed entirely of one specific type of atom under Dalton's theory, where all atoms of a specific element are perfectly identical in mass and properties.

Companel

A pure substance form when atoms of two or more different elements chemically bond together in a fixed whole number ratio.

Chemical reaction

A process where the bonds between atoms are broken and reformed, and atoms themselves are not altered, created, or destroyed, but are simply rearranged into new combinations.

Conservation

The principle that a specific physical property, in this case, total mass, remains completely constant throughout a closed system, meaning the mass of the starting materials must exactly equal the mass of the final products.

Proportion

The exact unchanging mathematical relationship between the different elements in a specific compound, where composition by mass never changes regardless of origin (such as water always having a two to one ratio of hydrogen atoms to oxygen atoms).

Indivisible

Unable to be broken down into smaller pieces; considered in Dalton's historical atomic theory to be the ultimate ultimate stopping point of matter, though modern chemistry proves atoms can be split into protons, neutrons, and electrons.