Section 1.2, investigating matter

Mr Robinson’s class has been working on chemistry, chapter 1.2, investigating matter. Frist things first though, what is matter? Matter is anything that occupies space and has mass and volume. Everything that occupies space is matter. Matter is made up of molecules. There are also different states of matter, solid, liquid and gas. When a solid changes from a solid to a liquid, it is called melting and when liquid changes to a solid, it is called solidification. Then, if your liquid changes to a gas, it is called evaporation and gas to a liquid is called condensation. A gas to a solid, however is called deposition and a solid to a gas, it is called sublimation. These can be very tricky to memorise, but with practice, you will get it eventually. We also learnt about the kenetic molecular theory, a theory that describes how molecules react with changes of state. Molecules are never completly still, even when they are in a solid they are still vibrating. Molecules move freely when they are in gas state and slide past each other in liquid state. The kenetic molecular theory is very important to chemistry. We also did a “bag of change lab”, where we put three different chemicals into a bag and observed the chemical reactions. We used soda bicorbonate (baking soda), calcium chloride, and bromthymol blue. We learnt that bromthymol blue is an indicator that tells you if something is acidic or not. This section was very interesting and we learnt about the different stages of matter. I enjoyed this unit as it was very interesting.