

A compound is a matter made up of more than one type of atom’”in other words, more than one type of elements. Generally all compounds can be considered as molecules but are molecules are not compound.Ī molecule can be most appropriately defined as a group of atoms tied in a definite arrangement. Compound is also a molecule but it contains atom of minimum two or more elements. Keep an eye out.A molecule came into being when two or more atoms interact chemically and combine together. While many of us may not use the words chemical change outside of science class, these changes are occurring all around us. This reaction is exothermic, as you can feel heat coming off the concrete. However, it is a chemical change in which the reactants react with the H20 and harden (called hydration). Most people think that concrete getting hard is a physical change (liquid to solid). Not surprisingly, chemical changes are discussed and analyzed by scientists and science teachers and written about in science textbooks and articles, but does the subject ever come up in just ordinary, everyday life? Absolutely! Check it out: The term chemical change is used throughout the many specialized fields of chemistry, including organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, biochemistry, and electrical chemistry. A noteworthy moment, in the late 1700s, was Antoine Lavoisier’s explanation of combustion in terms of chemical reactions. In the 1600s, with the rise of modern chemistry in the West, scientists began to understand chemical changes and discuss them in a scientific way. The Arab scientist Jabir ibn Hayyan (also latinized as Geber) is commonly considered the father of chemistry for his influential experiments in the 700s CE. One of the basic ideas of this one is once you make a chemical change, you can never go back to the way it was before.

I think it’s time for that chemistry musical. From antiquity into the Middle Ages, alchemists attempted to change base metals into gold. People have been pursuing the ability to change one substance into another for a very long time. In simplified terms, rust occurs when iron (Fe) reacts with oxygen (O 2), forming a new substance. Rust is the result of a very familiar chemical change. Clearly, chemical changes have taken place, and it would require a very complex process to separate the new molecules of sodium hydroxide and hydrogen gas back out into plain sodium and water. NaOH, which can badly burn your skin, and H 2, which can be highly explosive, are not at all the same as Na and H 2O. The resulting molecules are put together differently from the original molecules. Basically, when you introduce pure sodium metal (Na) to water (H 2O), you end up with sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and hydrogen gas (H 2). Remember how water gets frozen or boiled but still contains one oxygen molecule for every two hydrogen molecules? Not so when something like water meets something like sodium, where two new substances are created. The atoms and molecules in the substances you started with become completely reshuffled. In a chemical change, you always get something wholly new. This uncomplicated reversibility from one state to another is typical of physical changes. Just as we can melt solid ice to get liquid water again, so can we boil away the water from a pot of salted water to get the salt back out, recrystallized. This seems as if it should be a chemical change, right? Where did the salt go?! But, the original salt crystals are still there, just in a different physical state. That stays the same whether water takes the form of ice, steam, or liquid-and that’s why going from ice to water is only a physical change.Ī more complex physical change is the dissolving of salt into water. The structure of water is represented as H 2O, two hydrogen molecules bonded to one oxygen molecule. The physical state of ice, of course, is solid, and water is liquid. This means that ice and water are identical chemical substances, but thanks to temperature, they are simply in different physical states of matter. Ice and water look very different from each other, but they have the exact same chemical structure. Ice melting into water is a common physical change. While the substance may look very different, deep down it has the same atoms and molecules arranged together in the same way. A physical change involves only a change in the physical makeup of a substance, not its chemical makeup. We couldn’t even fry an egg without a chemical change.Ī chemical change is usually contrasted with physical change. We couldn’t drive a car if it weren’t for chemical reactions.
