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Franny112 Franny112
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12 years ago
I have looked in the Criminalistics book (Saferstein) and I believe the answer is in 219-232 but I do not understand the material I have read it about 20 times. Im just not understanding what is meant by physical and chemical properties can anyone help? This is due on Sunday and I really need to make a good grade. Thanks in advance Slight Smile.
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12 years ago
All substances have properties that we can use to identify them. For example we can idenify a person by their face, their voice, height, finger prints, DNA etc.. The more of these properties that we can identify, the better we know the person. In a similar way matter has properties - and there are many of them. There are two basic types of properties that we can associate with matter. These properties are called Physical properties and Chemical properties:

Physical properties:   Properties that do not change the chemical nature of matter
Chemical properties:   Properties that do change tha chemical nature of matter
Examples of physical properties are: color, smell, freezing point, boiling point, melting point, infra-red spectrum, attraction (paramagnetic) or repulsion (diamagnetic) to magnets, opacity, viscosity and density. There are many more examples. Note that measuring each of these properties will not alter the basic nature of the substance.

Examples of chemical properties are: heat of combustion, reactivity with water, PH, and electromotive force.

The more properties we can identify for a substance, the better we know the nature of that substance. These properties can then help us model the substance and thus understand how this substance will behave under various conditions.
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