States, Properties, and Measurement of Matter – Review

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms from the lecture on states of matter, properties, mixture separation, measurement concepts, and foundational chemical laws.

Solid

State of matter with particles that are tightly packed, vibrate in place, and have fixed shape and volume.

Liquid

State of matter where particles are close but can slide past one another, giving fixed volume but variable shape.

Gas

State of matter with widely spaced, rapidly moving particles; both shape and volume are variable.

Physical Property

Characteristic that can be observed or measured without altering a substance’s chemical identity (e.g., color, melting point).

Chemical Property

Characteristic revealed only by changing a substance’s chemical identity (e.g., flammability, reactivity with acid).

Intensive Property

Physical property independent of the amount of substance, such as density or boiling point.

Extensive Property

Physical property that depends on the amount of substance present, such as mass or volume.

Element

Pure substance composed of only one kind of atom; cannot be broken down by chemical means.

Compound

Pure substance made of two or more elements chemically combined in a fixed ratio.

Pure Substance

Matter with uniform composition and fixed properties; includes elements and compounds.

Mixture

Physical blend of two or more substances that retain their own identities and can be separated by physical means.

Homogeneous Mixture

Mixture with uniform composition and appearance throughout (also called a solution).

Heterogeneous Mixture

Mixture whose components are not uniformly distributed and may be visibly distinct.

Distillation

Separation technique that vaporizes and condenses components to separate liquids based on different boiling points.

Filtration

Method that uses a porous barrier to separate a solid from a liquid in a heterogeneous mixture.

Magnetic Separation

Process that removes magnetic materials from a mixture using a magnet.

Decantation

Technique that separates liquid from solid (or two immiscible liquids) by carefully pouring off the top layer.

Evaporation

Separation method that removes a liquid from a soluble solid by heating until the liquid vaporizes.

Sublimation

Process in which a solid changes directly to a gas, used to separate a volatile solid from non-volatile impurities.

Chromatography

Technique that separates mixture components based on differential movement through a stationary phase.

Accuracy

Closeness of a measured or calculated value to the true or accepted value.

Precision

Closeness of a set of measurements to each other, indicating reproducibility.

Significant Figures

Digits in a measurement that convey meaningful information about its precision, including certain and first uncertain digit.

Scientific Notation

Compact way of expressing very large or very small numbers as a coefficient times 10 raised to a power.

Density

Ratio of mass to volume of a substance, often expressed in g/mL or g/cm³.

Law of Conservation of Mass

Principle stating that matter is neither created nor destroyed during a chemical reaction; total mass of reactants equals total mass of products.

Law of Constant Composition

Rule that a given compound always contains the same elements in the same fixed, whole-number proportion by mass.

Law of Multiple Proportions

When two elements form more than one compound, the ratio of the masses of one element that combine with a fixed mass of the other is a small whole number.

Dalton’s Atomic Theory

Early 19th-century theory stating that matter is composed of indivisible atoms, atoms of an element are identical, compounds are combinations of different atoms, and chemical reactions rearrange atoms.