Properties of Matter

• The properties of matter are those characteristics or traits of the substance that we can observe, sense, or measure.

Categories of Matter

A property can be described as Quantitative or Qualitative.  

• A quantitative property describes a quantity associated with the substance, a numerical value. Example:  "25 grams"  is a property that describes a substance using a number. 

• A qualitative property describes a quality of the substance, something that can be sensed by your 5 senses, but without a measurement or numerical value. Example:  "shiny" is a property that you can see, but that is not associated with a number to explain what it looks like. 

A property can be described as Physical or Chemical.

• A physical property is one that can be measured without changing the identity of the substance. Example: color is a physical property because you can observe the color of something without changing what it is.

• A chemical property describes something that changes the identity of the substance.  It describes a reaction that changes what the compound or element is. Example: "burns".  a property of paper is that it burns.  Burning a paper turns the chemicals in the paper (cellulose) into different compounds (carbon dioxide and water).

A property can be described as Intensive or Extensive.

• An intensive property is a property of a substance that does NOT depend on how much of the substance is present.  The property will still be the same if you have a larger or smaller quantity of the substance.  Example: "hard" is an intensive property because a larger or smaller amount of the substance would still be hard. 

• An extensive property is a property that does depend on how much substance you have (the "extent" of your substance).  Example: "25 grams"  is a property that could change if you have a larger or smaller amount of substance.