General and specific properties. Types of physical properties

The physical properties of materials are those that are observed or measured without changing the composition of the material and can be general or specific. See each case:

• General physical properties:

Are those that are not exclusive to a material, which are general to all matter. Mass and volume are general properties, as they do not serve to identify a substance, since all matter has mass and volume.

To understand, think about whether we need to identify a certain colorless liquid. It would not be enough to measure its volume, as 1 liter, for example, can represent the volume of different materials, it could be 1 liter of water, 1 liter of alcohol or 1 liter of various lethal liquids that look the same from water.

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Making an analogy, an identification document, such as an identity card, does not use characteristics such as height and body mass to identify a person, as several individuals can have the same height of 1.70 and mass of 65 kg, and these characteristics are considered physical properties general.

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• Specific physical properties:

It is a set of unique and particular properties of each pure material, which can be used to identify them. There are more than thirty specific properties of matter, but three are the most used in identifying substances, which are: density, melting point, boiling point.

For example, water is the only substance that has a density of 1.0 g/cm³, freezes at 0ºC, boils at 100ºC, under normal conditions of temperature and pressure.

See the following table for these specific properties for various pure substances:

Returning to the identity card analogy, one of the specific properties used to identify a person is the digital one, as each person has one, it is an exclusive, particular property.

By Jennifer Fogaça
Graduated in Chemistry

Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:

FOGAÇA, Jennifer Rocha Vargas. "General and Specific Properties"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/quimica/propriedades-gerais-especificas.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.