Musical instruments like trumpets and trombones are made from an alloy called brass. Brass is composed of copper and zinc atoms and appears homogeneous under an optical microscope. The approximate composition of most brass objects is a 2:1 ratio of copper to zinc atoms, but the exact ratio varies somewhat from one piece of brass to another.
(a) Would you classify brass as an element, a compound, a homogeneous mixture, or a heterogeneous mixture?
(b) Would it be correct to say that brass is a solution? [Section 1.2]
Step 1 of 5) Every substance has unique properties. For example, the properties listed in Table 1.2 allow us to distinguish hydrogen, oxygen, and water from one another. The properties of matter can be categorized as physical or chemical. Physical properties can be observed without changing the identity and composition of the substance. These properties include color, odor, density, melting point, boiling point, and hardness. Chemical properties describe the way a substance may change, or react, to form other substances. A common chemical property is flammability, the ability of a substance to burn in the presence of oxygen. Some properties, such as temperature and melting point, are intensive properties. Intensive properties do not depend on the amount of sample being examined and are particularly useful in chemistry because many intensive properties can be used to identify substances. Extensive properties depend on the amount of sample, with two examples being mass and volume. Extensive properties relate to the amount of substance present.The changes substances undergo are either physical or chemical. During a physical change, a substance changes its physical appearance but not its composition. (That is, it is the same substance before and after the change.) The evaporation of water is a physical change. When water evaporates, it changes from the liquid state to the gas state, but it is still composed of water molecules, as depicted in Figure 1.4. All changes of state (for example, from liquid to gas or from liquid to solid) are physical changes.
