MIXTURE BASICS
Mixtures are absolutely everywhere you look. Mixtures are the form for most
things in nature. Rocks, air, or the ocean, they are just about anything you
find. They are substances held together by physical forces, not chemical. That
statement means the individual molecules enjoy being near each other, but their
fundamental chemical structure does not change when they enter the mixture.
When you see distilled water, it's
a pure substance. That fact means that there are just water molecules in the
liquid. A mixture would be a glass of water with other things dissolved inside,
maybe salt. Each of the substances in that glass of water keeps the original
chemical properties. So, if you have some dissolved substances, you can boil
off the water and still have those dissolved substances left over. Because it
takes very high temperatures to boil salt, the salt is left in the container.
MIXTURES ARE EVERYWHERE
There are an infinite
number of mixtures. Anything you can combine is a mixture. Think of everything
you eat. Just think about how many cakes there are. Each of those cakes is made
up of a different mixture of ingredients. Even the wood in your pencil is
considered a chemical mixture. There is the basic cellulose of the wood, but
there are also thousands of other compounds in that pencil.
Solutions
are also mixtures. If you put sand into a glass of water, it is considered to
be a mixture. You can always tell a mixture because each of the substances can
be separated from the group in different physical ways. You can always get the
sand out of the water by filtering the water away. A solution can also be made
of two liquids. Even something as simple as bleach and water is a solution.