What’s MATTER? AN OVERVIEW If only there was a way to organize or categorize all these known elements!

What is Matter? Matter is anything that takes up space and has mass A chair is matter, Your Mother is matter, Ms.T’s coffee is matter, Happiness is NOT matter

What is it made of? People used to think that everything was made of four elements: air, water, fire and earth They thought everything was a combination of those four things Although the elements of precious metals such as gold and copper were known for centuries, in the 1600s the first scientific discovery of an element (phosphorous) was made. By the 1800s Mendeleev had developed the periodic table of elements. Empedocles

Atoms and Molecules We used to think molecules were as small as something could get but we now know that molecules are made up of different atoms If you keep cutting pure copper into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually you will end up with an atom of pure copper An atom is the basic particle that all matter is made up of (it comes from the Greek work for ‘uncuttable’)

Atoms That copper atom can actually be cut up into smaller pieces; protons, electrons, and neutrons The number of protons, electrons and neutrons an atom has determines what kind of element it is

Types of matter We can experience matter in an uncountable number of ways First of all, if all the atoms in matter are the same, for example a copper atom, then the element copper is formed. Elements contain only one kind of atom. Then we can combine elements to make compounds, which are formed when two or more different kinds of atoms are combined. Compounds contain two or more different kinds of atoms. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc