Recall that chemistry is the study of matter and the changes it undergoes. Now remember, these changes can either be physical changes or chemical changes. Now when we're talking about physical changes here, it's changes in the physical state of a substance without a change in composition. So that basically means that the identity of our original substance stays intact.
Now, some common examples of physical changes include dissolving of solute. Now we'll talk about in greater detail about the term solute in later chapters, but just realize that a solute is the substance that gets dissolved within a liquid. Then what we can have next is we can have the mixing of substances. These are keywords that you should be on the lookout for when dealing with physical changes.
Next, the next four terms are pretty similar to each other. We can have the chopping, cutting, tearing or breaking of material. And similar to braking, we can have the crushing of a substance. For example, you have a can of soda. You take the can of soda and you crush it. Although it looks different, at the end of the day it's still a can. It's it's just a crushed can.
So a physical change makes a physical change within the state of a substance, but the identity stays intact. I had a a can, a soda can in the beginning. I crushed it, but I still have a soda can at the end of the day. Now that we've understood the basics of physical changes, let's move on to our example question.