Natural Sciences
25 Examples of Physical Changes
The chemicals and materials undergo various phenomena that alter its original condition. Physical changes are part of those modifications, and it is evidenced through the appearance of the elements involved.
What are physical changes?
Specifically, physical changes in matter are those that only develop in physical properties, and not in chemical structure . This means that, unlike chemical changes, physical ones are reversible, in addition, the substances that undergo these modifications remain the same, not so in the chemical changes that are transformed into others.
Types of physical changes
Volume changes
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- Dilation : At high temperatures, the body of an element increases its volume.
- Contraction : At low temperatures, the body of an element contracts and therefore its volume decreases.
Regressive changes
- Condensation : It goes from a gaseous state to a liquid state.
- Solidification : It goes from liquid to solid.
- Evaporation : It goes from a liquid state to a gaseous state.
- Boiling : All the particles of the liquid change to a gaseous state, unlike evaporation that only change the particles of the upper layer.
- Fusion : It goes from a solid to a liquid state due to high temperatures.
- Regressive sublimation : When it goes from a gaseous state to a liquid directly.
- Elongation : when a body is stretched and its volume changes.
Examples of Physical changes
- The solidification of the water (ice)
- The evaporation of a spray
- A fruit cut into pieces
- Sugar in honey
- Salt dissolved in water
- Naphthalene sublimation
- Pieces of paper
- Boiled water
- Wood sawdust
- Iron filings
- Fusion of a metal
- Dry ice
- Stretched gum
- Melted ice cream
- Beaten wood that shrinks
- Wood that can be ‘stretched’
- Clouds are part of physical changes in the air
- Crush glass to powder
- Melted sugar
- Melted aluminum
- Mud
- Rubber shrinkage
- A clay basket
- The liquefaction of oxygen
- A bent wire