Introductory Chemistry Principles and Measurement Units

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms from Chapter 1 through Chapter 6 of the introductory chemistry lecture notes.

Physical Properties

Properties associated with a substance where the underlying chemical structure does not change, such as hardness, density, and color.

Physical Changes

Changes that alter a substance without affecting its chemical structure, such as cutting, dissolving, or melting.

Chemical Properties

Properties associated with how the molecular structure of a substance changes when subjected to specific conditions, such as combustion or reaction with acids.

Intensive Property

A physical or chemical parameter that does not depend on the amount of material present, such as density.

Extensive Property

A property that increases or changes as the amount of material increases, such as mass or volume.

Conservation of Mass

The principle stating that mass is conserved across any described chemical or physical process, meaning the total mass remains constant from start to finish.

SI Units (System Internationalis)

A standardized set of base and derived units agreed upon by scientific convention.

Ampere

The SI base unit for electrical current, which is defined as one coulomb per second ($1\text{ coulomb/s}$).

Candela

The SI base unit used to measure radiant intensity.

Derived SI Unit

An SI unit created by multiplying or dividing combinations of the base SI units, such as $m/s^2$ for acceleration.

Joule

The primary SI derived unit for energy, equivalent to force times distance or $kg \times m^2/s^2$.

Liter

A non-SI unit of volume related to the cubic meter, defined as $0.1\text{ meter}$ cubed or $1\text{ cubic decimeter}$ ($1\text{ dm}^3$), which is $1000$ times smaller than a cubic meter.

Angstrom

A non-SI unit of length equal to $10^{-10}\text{ m}$, commonly used in chemistry to measure short distances such as chemical bond lengths.

Degree Celsius

A non-SI unit for temperature commonly used on lab thermometers, which differs from Kelvin by an additive offset of $273.15$.

Random Errors

Fundamental measurement errors inherent to experimental observations that can be minimized by repeating experiments multiple times and averaging the results.

Precision

A measure of how closely repeated experimental measurements cluster around an average value.

Accuracy

A measure of how close a measured result is to the true or right answer, which can be affected by systematic errors.

Systematic Error

An error stemming from an issue in the experimental setup that consistently skews measurement results too far to one side of the true value.

Significant Digits

The digits in a measured or calculated quantity that carry meaning regarding the precision of the measurement.

Least Significant Digit

The rightmost digit in a reported numerical value that determines the precision limit during addition or subtraction operations.