The question “what is matter?” has two wildly different answers, depending on what the person asking the question is looking for. The simple, obvious, intuitive answer is that matter is anything that has mass and takes up volume. By contrast,…
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Silver is considered by many as one of the most precious metals on the earth today. It is used in jewelery, building, and pretty much everything that needs it. So what are the numbers behind this mysterious metal? Well here…
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Atoms are the smallest bits of matter in the universe. Here on Earth, there are 92 different varieties of naturally occurring atoms which display an array of physical elemental properties. There are also some man-made atoms on Earth as well,…
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At least two thousand years ago, the Chinese invented gunpowder, a mixture of charcoal, sulfur and potassium nitrate (saltpeter). Later on the Chinese used gunpowder to make rockets and by adding an explosive charge to their rockets, the incipient form…
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The topic of this article is more than a bit ironic, as the term atom derives from the Greek word atamos, which means something that cannot be further divided. Nevertheless, atoms do have components, and we will take a quick…
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The periodic table of elements at first glance resembles a scrabble board in that colored squares of information are lined up horizontally and vertically. Within these blocks of information we learn the symbol of elements, the atomic weight, the date…
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For those of you who think that this topic is related to “Matters,” an album by the punk band Pulley, or “Matter,” a science fiction book by Iain Banks, I am sorry to disappoint you. However, before you stop reading,…
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Though every element has a specific number of protons and electrons, the number of neutrons varies within the same element. These variations are called isotopes (Learn on the isotopes definition). On the periodic table, the atomic mass of an element…
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If you are not familiar with the periodic table of elements, when you first look at it, it may look like an undecipherable page of letters and numbers (actually, even if you are familiar with it, it may look like…
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The term state when used in reference to matter is an arbitrary term. The state of mater is a classification used to separate different materials into broad categories. Chemists find it very convenient to identify a material by its state,…
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