SSCI2 - PHYSICAL SCIENCE

LESSON 1: FORMATION OF LIGHT AND HEAVY ELEMENTS IN THE UNIVERSE

The Origin of Light Elements
The origin of all the naturally occurring elements fall into two phases:

 Big Bang or Primordial Nucleosynthesis

- the origin of the “light” elements
 Stellar Nucleosynthesis
- the origin and production of the “heavy” elements
Big Bang or Primordial Nucleosynthesis

 The origin of the “light” elements

 Big Bang nucleosynthesis began roughly 10 seconds after the big bang, when the universe had cooled sufficiently
to allow deuterium nuclei to survive disruption by high-energy photons.
 The history of Big Bang nucleosynthesis began with the calculations of Ralph Alpher in the 1940s. Alpher
published the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper that outlined the theory of light-element production in the early
universe.
 During the 1970s, there was a major puzzle in that the density of baryons as calculated by Big Bang
nucleosynthesis was much less than the observed mass of the universe based on measurements of galaxy rotation
curves and galaxy cluster dynamics. This puzzle was resolved in large part by postulating the existence of dark
matter.

Big Bang or Primordial Nucleosynthesis

The image illustrates two of the nuclear reactions occuring during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis: It shows protons
and neutrons combining to form deuterium nuclei (D, containing one proton and one neutron), accompanied by the
emission of high energy photons (denoted as γ); furthermore, it shows two deuterium nuclei fusing to produce one nucleus
of helium-3 (with two protons and one neutrons) and one free neutron.

Stellar nucleosynthesis
Stellar nucleosynthesis is the process by which elements are created within stars by combining the protons and
neutrons together from the nuclei of lighter elements. All of the atoms in the universe began as hydrogen. Fusion inside
stars transforms hydrogen into helium, heat, and radiation. Heavier elements are created in different types of stars as they
die or explode.
The idea that stars fuse together the atoms of light elements was first proposed in the 1920s, by Einstein's strong
supporter Arthur Eddington. However, the real credit for developing it into a coherent theory is given to Fred Hoyle's
work in the aftermath of World War II. Hoyle's theory contained some significant differences from the current theory,
most notably that he did not believe in the big bang theory but instead that hydrogen was continually being created within
our universe.
The energy and temperature of the universe are extremely high to cause the neutrons and protons to combine and
form certain species of atomic nuclei in a process called nuclear fusion.

Stars create new elements in their cores by squeezing elements together in a process called nuclear fusion. First,
stars fuse hydrogen atoms into helium. Helium atoms then fuse to create beryllium, and so on, until fusion in the star's
core has created every element up to iron.

An Isotope is a form of an element that has the same atomic number of the original element but with different
atomic mass or mass number.
The Origin of Heavy Elements

 Heavy elements were formed only billions of years after the formation of stars. The density inside a star is great
enough to sustain fusion for extended time periods required to synthesize heavy elements.
 Stars are hot and dense enough to burn hydrogen-1 (1H) to helium-4 (4He). The formation of heavy elements by
fusion of lighter nuclei in the interior of stars is called “stellar nucleosynthesis”
There are many nuclear synthetic pathways or nuclear fusions to produce heavy elements:

Carbon-Nitrogen-oxygen cycle
The CNO cycle is one of the two known sets of
fusion reactions by which stars convert hydrogen to helium,
the other being the proton–proton chain reaction, which is
more efficient at the Sun's core temperature. The CNO cycle is
hypothesized to be dominant in stars that are more than 1.3
times as massive as the Sun.

Proton-proton fusion
 The proton–proton chain reaction, also
commonly referred to as the p-p chain, is one of two
known sets of nuclear fusion reactions by which stars
convert hydrogen to helium. It dominates in stars with
masses less than or equal to that of the Sun, whereas
the CNO cycle, the other known reaction, is
suggested by theoretical models to dominate in stars
with masses greater than about 1.3 times that of the
Sun.

Triple alpha process

The triple-alpha process is a set of nuclear
fusion reactions by which three helium-4 nuclei (alpha particles) are
transformed into carbon.

Layers near core of stars have very high

temperatures enough to nucleosynthesize heavy elements
such as silicon and iron.
Elements heavier than iron cannot be formed
through fusion as tremendous amounts of energy are
needed for the reaction to occur. Heavy elements are
formed in a supernova, a massive explosion of a star.

SUPERNOVA

 A supernova is the explosive death of a star.

 In supernova, neutron capture reaction takes place, leading to formation of heavy elements. In a neutron capture
reaction, heavy elements are created by addition of more neutrons to existing nuclei instead of fusion of light
nuclei.
 Adding neutrons to a nucleus doesn’t change an element. Rather, a more massive isotope of the same element is
produced. Elements higher than iron requires tremendous amount of energy to be formed. Thus, they were
produced from a neutron capture reaction in a supernova.
SUMMARY
There are 3 reactions that led to the formation of the elements: nucleusynthesis, fusion, and neutron capture
reaction. These reaction required a certain amount of energy to proceed, which was obtained from the heat of the
continuously expanding universe. Thus energy in the form of heat does not only produce work but also the elements that
make up matter that we have today.
 The reaction involved in the formation of these elements are dependent on the atomic mass of the elements. More
energy, and thus higher temperature, is needed to form heavier elements. Nucleuosynthesis formed light elements,
whereas fusion in stars formed elements with an atomic mass that is within the range of beryllium and iron. Thus any
element with an atomic mass higher than iron, which required tremendous amount of energy to be formed was produced
from a neutron capture -reaction in supernova.

LESSON 2: THE DEVELOPMENT OF ATOMIC THEORY THROUGH TIME

Introduction

 Atomic theory first originated with Greek philosophers around 2500 years ago. This basic theory remained
unchanged until the 19th century when it first became possible to test the theory with more sophisticated
experiments.
 As science has rapidly advanced over the past few centuries the atomic theory has been refined in accordance
with the accepted scientific principles and theories of the time.
ATOMS

 Atoms are the smallest particles of matter

 Atoms make up everything around us
 Molecules are combinations of atoms
 Elements are only one type of atom
 Compounds are made up of different types of atoms
Components of an Atom
What makes up an atom?
Nucleus

 At the center of all atoms is the Nucleus.

 The nucleus contains protons and neutrons
Protons

 (+) Positively charged atomic particles

Neutrons

 Uncharged (neutral) atomic particles

Electrons

 (-) Negatively charged atomic particles

Nature prefers balance so if a particle is positively charged, it will

attract negatively charged particles and vice-versa.

ATOMIC NUMBER

 The atomic number is equal to the number of protons in the nucleus of an atom.
 The atomic number identifies the element.
Ancient Greek Period

 Leucippus
Leucippus, (flourished 5th century BC, probably at Miletus, on the west coast of Asia Minor), Greek philosopher
credited by Aristotle and by Theophrastus with having originated the theory of atomism. It has been difficult to
distinguish his contribution from that of his most famous pupil, Democritus.

 Democritus
Democritus of Abdera, named the building blocks of matter atomos, meaning literally “indivisible,” about 430
BCE. Democritus believed that atoms were uniform, solid, hard, incompressible, and indestructible and that they moved
in infinite numbers through empty space until stopped. Differences in atomic shape and size determined the various
properties of matter.

 Aristotle
said there were only four elements (water, fire, air, earth) and that these had some smallest unit that made up all
matter. Aristotle's teachings against the idea of Democritus's atom were so powerful that the idea of the atom fell out of
philosophical fashion for the next 2,000 years.
Back in the Iron Age

 Some elements are found in nature in a relatively pure form.

 Sulfur, copper, gold,silver, and iron weremade into decorativeand useful objects.
ALCHEMISTS (17th Century – 20th Century)

 Hennig Brand
Hennig Brand was a German merchant, pharmacist and alchemist, who lived and worked in Hamburg. The
circumstances of Brand's birth are unknown but he was born in 1630 and died around 1692 or 1710. Some sources
describe his origins as humble and indicate that he had been an apprentice glassmaker as a young man. However,
correspondence by his second wife Margaretha states that he was of high social standing. In any case he held a post as a
junior army officer during the Thirty Years' War and his first wife's dowry was substantial, allowing him to pursue
alchemy on leaving the army.
Contribution:
 He collected 50 buckets of urine, fermented it, and then boiled off the water.
 Henning Brand discovered phosphorus in 1669

 Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject
educator, and liberal political theorist who published over 150 works. He discovered oxygen in the year 1774.

 Antoine Lavoisier
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, also Antoine Lavoisier after the French Revolution, was a French nobleman and
chemist who was central to the 18th-century chemical revolution and who had a large influence on both the history of
chemistry and the history of biology.
Contributions to the science of chemistry:
 NITROGEN GAS
 Law of conservation of mass
 Discovers nitrogen gas, and that oxygen can be chemically separated from certain compounds
 confirms law of definite proportions
 father of modern chemistry

 John Dalton
John Dalton FRS was an English chemist, physicist, and meteorologist. He is best known for introducing the
atomic theory into chemistry, and for his research into colour blindness, sometimes referred to as Daltonism in his honour.

Contributions to the understanding in the structure of atom:

 Father of modern Atomic Theory
 thought atoms of an element were all identical and indivisible
 compounds are formed from atoms of different elements
John Dalton (1803):
Atoms are tiny, hard spheres that cannot be split up

CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS JOIN TOGETHER (in the late 19th Century – 20th Century)

 J. J. Thomson
Thomson, in full Sir Joseph John Thomson, (born December 18, 1856, Cheetham Hill, near Manchester, England
—died August 30, 1940, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire), English physicist who helped revolutionize the knowledge of
atomic structure by his discovery of the electron (1897).
Contributions to the understanding in the structure of atom:
 Discovers the electron
 Plum Pudding Model of the atom
 All the charged particles were randomly scattered like “plums in pudding”
 did not know about neutrons
 Nobel Prize 1906.
 Thompsons experiment to discover electrons (1897)
J.J Thomson (1897):
Electrons are distributed inside a positive mass like raising in a plum pudding

 Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM, FRS, HonFRSE was a New Zealand-born British
physicist who came to be known as the father of nuclear physics. Encyclopædia Britannica considers him to be the
greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday.
Contributions to the understanding in the structure of atom:
 Electrons are separated from the nucleus
 nucleus has positive charge and the shells are negative
 atoms are mostly empty space (1911) - the Gold foil experiment
 Planetary model
Ernest Rutherford (1909):
Most of the atoms mass is inside the nucleus. Electrons circle the nucleus. Most of the atom is empty space.

 Henry Moseley
Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley was an English physicist, whose contribution to the science of physics was the
justification from physical laws of the previous empirical and chemical concept of the atomic number. This stemmed from
his development of Moseley's law in X-ray spectra.

Contributions to the science of chemistry:

 Discovers the atomic number
 corrects Mendeleev’s periodic table, basing it on Atomic Number

 Neils Bohr
Niels Henrik David Bohr was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic
structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr was also a philosopher and
a promoter of scientific research.
Contributions to the science of chemistry:
  Electrons are found at distinct distances from the nucleus
 wave model
 cloud model
 quantum mechanics

In the Bohr model of the atom, electrons travel in defined circular orbits around the nucleus. The orbits are labeled
by an integer, the quantum number n. Electrons can jump from one orbit to another by emitting or absorbing energy.

LESSON 3: POLARITY OF MOLECULES

ELECTRONEGATIVITY

Jöns Jacob Berzelius and Avogadro

 Avogadro and other chemists studied electronegativity before it was formally named by Jöns Jacob Berzelius in
1811. 

In 1932, Linus Pauling proposed an electronegativity scale based on bond energies.

Electronegativity values on the Pauling scale are dimensionless numbers that run from about 0.7 to
3.98. The Pauling scale values are relative to the electronegativity of hydrogen (2.20). While the
Pauling scale is most often used, other scales include the Mulliken scale, Allred-Rochow scale, Allen scale, and
Sanderson scale.

ELECTRONEGATIVITY

 Electronegativity is the property of an atom which increases with its tendency to attract the electrons of a bond.

The chlorine atom has a higher electronegativity than the hydrogen atom, so the bonding
electrons will be closer to the Cl than to the H in the HCl molecule.

CHEMICAL BONDING

 If two bonded atoms have the same electronegativity values as each other, they share electrons equally in a
covalent bond. Usually, the electrons in a chemical bond are more attracted to one atom (the more electronegative
one) than to the other. This results in a polar covalent bond. If the electronegativity values are very different, the
electrons aren't shared at all. One atom essentially takes the bond electrons from the other atom, forming an ionic
bond.

In the O2 molecule, both atoms have the same

electronegativity. The electrons in the covalent bond are
shared equally between the two oxygen atoms.

 The most electronegative element on the periodic

table is Fluorine (3.98). The least electronegative element is Caesium (0.79). The opposite of electronegativity is
electropositivity, so you could simply say cesium is the most electropositive element. Note that older texts list
both francium and cesium as least electronegative at 0.7, but the value for cesium was experimentally revised to
the 0.79 value. There is no experimental data for francium, but its ionization energy is higher than that of cesium,
so it is expected that francium is slightly more electronegative.

Electronegativity as a Periodic Table Trend

 Like electron affinity, atomic/ionic radius, and ionization energy, electronegativity shows a definite trend on the
periodic table. Electronegativity generally increases moving from left to right across a period. The noble gases
 tend to be exceptions to this trend. Electronegativity generally decreases moving down a periodic table group.
This correlates with the increased distance between the nucleus and the valence electron.

POLAR COVALENT AND NON-POLAR COVALENT BOND

POLAR COVALENT BOND

 Polar covalent bond occur when electron pairs are unequally shared. The difference in electronegativity between
atoms is significant. Examples of compounds having polar covalent bonds are:
HCl EN of H = 2.1 EN of H = 2.1 ▲EN = 0.9
HF EN of H = 2.1 EN of F = 4.0 ▲EN = 1.9

NON-POLAR COVALENT BOND

MOLECULAR GEOMETRY

 Molecular geometries (linear, trigonal, tetrahedral, trigonal bipyramidal, and octahedral) are determined by the
VSEPR theory. A table of geometries using the VSEPR theory can facilitate drawing and understanding
molecules. The table of molecular geometries can be found in the first figure. The second figure serves as a visual
aid for the table.
AXE METHOD

 Another way of looking at molecular geometries is through the “AXE method” of electron counting. A in AXE
represents the central atom and always has an implied subscript one; X represents the number of sigma bonds
between the central and outside atoms (multiple covalent bonds—double, triple, etc.— count as one X); and E
represents the number of lone electron pairs surrounding the central atom. The sum of X and E, known as the
steric number, is also associated with the total number of hybridized orbitals used by valence bond theory.
VSEPR uses the steric number and distribution of X’s and E’s to predict molecular geometric shapes.

VSEPR MODEL
 The valence shell electron pair repulsion (VSEPR) model focuses on the bonding and nonbonding electron pairs
present in the outermost (valence) shell of an atom that connects with two or more other atoms.

 In a linear model, atoms are connected in a straight line, and a bond angle is simply the geometric angle between
two adjacent bonds. A simple triatomic molecule of the type AX2 has its two bonding orbitals 180° apart.

 Molecules with the trigonal planar shape are triangular and in one plane, or flat surface.

 Tetra- signifies four, and - hedral relates to a face of a solid; “tetrahedral” literally means “having four faces.”
This shape is found when there are four bonds all on one central atom, with no lone electron pairs.
  A trigonal bipyramidal shape forms when a central atom is surrounded by five atoms in a molecule. In the
geometry, three atoms are in the same plane with bond angles of 120°; the other two atoms are on opposite ends
of the molecule.

 Octa- signifies eight, and -hedral relates to a face of a solid, so “octahedral” literally means “having eight faces.”
The bond angles are all 90°, and just as four electron pairs experience minimum repulsion when they are directed
toward the corners of a tetrahedron, six electron pairs try to point toward the corners of an octahedron.

Lewis theory (Gilbert Newton Lewis, 1875-1946)

focuses on the valence electrons, since the outermost electrons are the ones that
are highest in energy and farthest from the nucleus, and are therefore the ones that
are most exposed to other atoms when bonds form.

Lewis dot diagrams for elements are a handy way of picturing valence electrons, and especially, what electrons
are available to be shared in covalent bonds. The valence electrons are written as dots surrounding the symbol for the
element: one dot is place on each side first, and when all four positions are filled, the remaining dots are paired with one
of the first set of dots, with a maximum of two dots placed on each side.

Covalent bonds generally form when a nonmetal combines with another nonmetal. Both elements in the bond are
attracted to the unpaired valence electrons so strongly that neither can take the electron away from the other (unlike the
case with ionic bonds), so the unpaired valence electrons are shared by the two atoms, forming a covalent bond:

The shared electrons act like they belong to both atoms in the bond, and
they bind the two atoms together into a molecule. The shared electrons are
usually represented as a line (—) between the bonded atoms. (In Lewis
structures, a line represents two electrons.)

Atoms tend to form covalent bonds in such a way as to satisfy the octet
rule, with every atom surrounded by eight electrons. (Hydrogen is an exception,
since it is in row 1 of the periodic table, and only has the 1s orbital available in
the ground state, which can only hold two electrons.)
The shared pairs of electrons are bonding pairs (represented by lines in the drawings above). The unshared pairs of
electrons are lone pairs or nonbonding pairs.
All of the bonds shown so far have been single bonds, in which one pair of electrons is being shared. It is also possible to
have double bonds, in which two pairs of electrons are shared, and triple bonds, in which three pairs of electrons are
shared:

Multiple bonds are shorter and stronger than their corresponding single bond counterparts.

LESSON 4: MATTER

What is Matter?

 Matter is anything that occupies space and has mass.

 All physical objects are composed of matter, and an easily observed property of matter is its state or phase.

 The classical states of matter are solid, liquid and gas.

 Several other states, including plasma and Bose-Einstein condensate, do exist, but it is the classical states that can
transition directly into any of the other classical states.

STATES OF MATTER

 Solid

 Liquid

 Gas

SOLID

 A solid’s particles are packed closely together. The forces between the particles are strong enough that the
particles cannot move freely; they can only vibrate. As a result, a solid has a stable, definite shape and a definite
volume. Solids can only change shape under force, as when broken or cut.

LIQUID
  A liquid is a fluid that conforms to the shape of its container but that retains a nearly constant volume independent
of pressure. The volume is definite (does not change) if the temperature and pressure are constant. When a solid is
heated above its melting point, it becomes liquid because the pressure is higher than the triple point of the
substance.

GAS

 Gas molecules have either very weak bonds or no bonds at all, so they can move freely and quickly. Because of
this, not only will a gas conform to the shape of its container, it will also expand to completely fill the container.
Gas molecules have enough kinetic energy that the effect of intermolecular forces is small (or zero, for an ideal
gas), and they are spaced very far apart from each other; the typical distance between neighboring molecules is
much greater than the size of the molecules themselves.

THE 6 PHASE CHANGES

 Melting: Solid to Liquid

 Freezing: Liquid to Solid

 Evaporation: Liquid to Gas

 Condensation: Gas to Liquid

 Sublimation: Solid to Gas

 Deposition: Gas to Solid

Physical and Chemical Properties of Matter

 All properties of matter are either extensive or intensive and either physical or chemical. Extensive properties,
such as mass and volume, depend on the amount of matter that is being measured. Intensive properties, such as
density and color, do not depend on the amount of matter. Both extensive and intensive properties are physical
properties, which means they can be measured without changing the substance’s chemical identity.

 Solid, liquids, and gases: Water can exist in several states, including ice (solid), water (liquid), and water vapor
(gas).

 For example, the freezing point of a substance is a physical property: when water freezes, it’s still water (H2O)—
it’s just in a different physical state.

 A chemical property, meanwhile, is any of a material’s properties that becomes evident during a chemical
reaction; that is, any quality that can be established only by changing a substance’s chemical identity. Chemical
properties cannot be determined just by viewing or touching the substance; the substance’s internal structure must
be affected for its chemical properties to be investigated.

Physical Properties

Physical properties are properties that can be measured or observed without changing the chemical nature of the
substance. Some examples of physical properties are:

 color (intensive)

 density (intensive)
  volume (extensive)

 mass (extensive)

 boiling point (intensive): the temperature at which a substance boils

 melting point (intensive): the temperature at which a substance melts

Physical properties: Matter has mass and volume, as demonstrated by this concrete block. You can observe its mass by
feeling how heavy it is when you try to pick it up; you can observe its volume by looking at it and noticing its size. Mass
and volume are both examples of extensive physical properties.

Chemical Properties

Remember, the definition of a chemical property is that measuring that property must lead to a change in the substance’s
chemical structure. Here are several examples of chemical properties:

 Heat of combustion is the energy released when a compound undergoes complete combustion (burning) with
oxygen. The symbol for the heat of combustion is ΔHc.

 Chemical stability refers to whether a compound will react with water or air (chemically stable substances will not
react). Hydrolysis and oxidation are two such reactions and are both chemical changes.

 Flammability refers to whether a compound will burn when exposed to flame. Again, burning is a chemical
reaction—commonly a high-temperature reaction in the presence of oxygen.

 The preferred oxidation state is the lowest-energy oxidation state that a metal will undergo reactions in order to
achieve (if another element is present to accept or donate electrons).

Physical and Chemical Changes to Matter

Physical and Chemical Change

There are two types of change in matter: physical change and chemical change. As the names suggest, a physical change
affects a substance’s physical properties, and a chemical change affects its chemical properties. Many physical changes
are reversible (such as heating and cooling), whereas chemical changes are often irreversible or only reversible with an
additional chemical change.

Physical Changes

Another way to think about this is that a physical change does not cause a substance to become a fundamentally different
substance but a chemical change causes a substance to change into something chemically new. Blending a smoothie, for
example, involves two physical changes: the change in shape of each fruit and the mixing together of many different
pieces of fruit. Because none of the chemicals in the smoothie components are changed during blending (the water and
vitamins from the fruit are unchanged, for example), we know that no chemical changes are involved.

Physical change: Blending a smoothie involves physical changes but no chemical changes.

Boiling water: Boiling water is an example of a physical change and not a chemical change because the water vapor still
has the same molecular structure as liquid water (H2O). If the bubbles were caused by the decomposition of a molecule
into a gas (such as H2O →H2 and O2), then boiling would be a chemical change.
Chemical Changes

Chemical changes are also known as chemical reactions. The “ingredients” of a reaction are called the reactants, and the
end results are called the products. The change from reactants to products is signified by an arrow:

Reactants → Products

The formation of gas bubbles is often the result of a chemical change (except in the case of boiling, which is a physical
change). A chemical change might also result in the formation of a precipitate, such as the appearance of a cloudy
material when dissolved substances are mixed.

Rotting, burning and rusting are all further types of chemical changes because they produce substances that are entirely
new chemical compounds.

Chemical Equation

The reaction between zinc and sulfur can be shown in what is called a chemical equation. In words, we could write the
reaction as:

zinc + sulfur → zinc sulfide

The more convenient way to express a chemical reaction is to use the symbols and formulas of the substances involved:

Zn + S → ZnS

The substance(s) to the left of the arrow in a chemical equation are called reactants.

Reactants and Product

A reactant is a substance that is present at the start of a chemical reaction. The substance(s) to the right of the arrow are
called products. A product is a substance that is present at the end of a chemical reaction. In the equation above, the zinc
and sulfur are the reactants that chemically combine to form the zinc sulfide product.

There is a standard way of writing chemical equations. The reactants are all written on the left-hand side of the equation,
with the products on the right-hand side. An arrow points from the reactants to the products to indicate the direction of
the reaction:

reactants → products

When appropriate, a symbol may be written above or below the arrow to indicate some special circumstance. The symbol
“Δ” is often used to indicate that the reaction is to be heated.

The presence of the arrow also indicates that the reaction goes in one direction under the conditions indicated. There are
reactions which can be easily reversed, but we will not take those up right now.

Classification of Matter

(Elements, Compounds, Mixtures)

Substances and Mixtures

Substances are composed of pure elements or chemically bonded elements, whereas mixtures are composed of non-
bonded substances.

 Matter can be broken down into two categories: pure substances and mixtures. Pure substances are further
broken down into elements and compounds. Mixtures are physically combined structures that can be separated
into their original components.

Chemical Substances

A chemical substance is a form of matter that has constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. It cannot
be separated into components without breaking chemical bonds. Chemical substances can be solids, liquids, gases, or
plasma. Changes in temperature or pressure can cause substances to shift between the different phases of matter.

An element is a chemical substance that is made up of a particular kind of atom and hence cannot be broken down or
transformed by a chemical reaction into a different element. All atoms of an element have the same number of protons,
though they may have different numbers of neutrons and electrons.

Chemical Mixtures

A mixture is a material system made up of two or more different substances, which are mixed but not combined
chemically. A mixture refers to the physical combination of two or more substances in which the identities of the
individual substances are retained. Mixtures take the form of alloys, solutions, suspensions, and colloids.

Naturally occurring sulfur crystals: Sulfur occurs naturally as elemental sulfur, sulfide, and sulfate minerals and in
hydrogen sulfide. This mineral deposit is composed of a mixture of substances.

Heterogeneous Mixtures

A heterogeneous mixture is a mixture of two or more chemical substances (elements or compounds), where the different
components can be visually distinguished and easily separated by physical means. Examples include:

 mixtures of sand and water

 mixtures of sand and iron filings

 a conglomerate rock

 water and oil

 a salad

 trail mix

 mixtures of gold powder and silver

powder

HETEROGENOUS MIXTURE: Water and Oil

Homogeneous Mixtures
A homogeneous mixture is a mixture of two or
more chemical substances (elements or
compounds), where the different components cannot be visually distinguished. Often separating the components of a
homogeneous mixture is more challenging than separating the components of a heterogeneous mixture.

Separating Mixtures

Mixtures can be separated using a variety of techniques.

 Chromatography: Involves solvent separation on a solid medium.

 Distillation: Takes advantage of differences in boiling points.

 Evaporation: Removes a liquid from a solution to leave a solid material.

 Filtration: Separates solids of different sizes.

Elements and Compounds

 Elements are the simplest complete chemical substances. Each element corresponds to a single entry on
the periodic table. An element is a material that consists of a single type of atom. Each atom type
contains the same number of protons.

 Chemical bonds link elements together to form more complex molecules called compounds. A
compound consists of two or more types of elements held together by covalent or ionic bonds.

 Elements cannot be divided into smaller units without large amounts of energy. Compounds, on the
other hand, can have their bonds broken with practical amounts of energy, such as the heat from a fire.

Elements

A chemical element is a pure substance that consists of one type of atom. Each atom has an atomic number,
which represents the number of protons that are in the nucleus of a single atom of that element. The periodic
table of elements is ordered by ascending atomic number.

The chemical elements are divided into the metals, the metalloids, and the non-metals. Metals, typically found
on the left side of the periodic table, are:

 often conductive to electricity

 malleable

 shiny
 sometimes magnetic

Aluminum, iron, copper, gold, mercury and lead are metals.

In contrast, non-metals, found on the right side of the periodic table (to the right of the staircase), are:
  typically not conductive

 not malleable

 dull (not shiny)

 not magnetic
Examples of elemental non-metals include carbon and oxygen. Metalloids have some characteristics of metals
and some characteristics of non-metals. Silicon and arsenic are metalloids.

The periodic table: The periodic table shows 118 elements, including metals (pink), nonmetals (blue), and metalloids
(green).

As of November, 2011, 118 elements have been identified (the most recently identified was ununseptium, in 2010). Of
these 118 known elements, only the first 98 are known to occur naturally on Earth. The elements that do not occur
naturally on Earth are the synthetic products of man-made nuclear reactions. 80 of the 98 naturally-occurring elements are
stable; the rest are radioactive, which means they decay into lighter elements over timescales ranging from fractions of a
second to billions of years.
Hydrogen and helium are by far the most abundant elements in the universe. However, iron is the most abundant element
(by mass) in the composition of the Earth, and oxygen is the most common element in the layer that is the Earth’s crust.

Compounds

Pure samples of isolated elements are uncommon in nature. While the 98 naturally occurring elements have all been
identified in mineral samples from the Earth’s crust, only a small minority of them can be found as recognizable,
relatively pure minerals. Among the more common of such “native elements” are copper, silver, gold, and sulfur.
Carbon is also commonly found in the form of coal, graphite, and diamonds. The noble gases (e.g., neon) and noble
metals (e.g., mercury) can also be found in their pure, non-bonded forms in nature. Still, most of these elements are found
in mixtures.

Table salt (NaCl) Water (H2O)

When two distinct elements are chemically combined, for example a chemical bonds form between their atoms — the
result is called a chemical compound.