Ion Turtle's Blog-O-Science: Compounds and Mixtures

Hello everyone! Its Ion_Turtle and today I'm talking about compounds and mixtures.

Compounds and mixtures are very different. Compounds are combined chemically, but mixture are combined physically. A compound is created when two or more atoms combine. Like water. Water has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen. When too atoms combine they share one or more electrons. In water the oxygen atom wants 2 more electrons and each hydrogen want another one. If you look at the atom picture below you will see that there are 2 electrons where the hydrogen meets the oxygen. Those are the shared electrons.

You can see the shared electrons

Salt is also a compound. It is made of sodium (A deadly metal) and chloride (A deadly gas), but when they are combined they make table salt. Because compounds are made by a chemical reaction it is very hard to split it.

Mixtures are very different. They are blended without any chemical change. Each substance keeps its own properties. A mixture is also very easy to separate. A salad is a mixture. This is because you take lettuce, tomatoes, and croutons and combine them. The separate ingredients stay the same when you mix them. You can also easily separate them. They can be heterogeneous or homogeneous. Homogeneous mixtures are mixtures where something dissolved in a liquid. Like salt water or lemonade mix. The salt in the salt water can not be seen and it is spread evenly throughout the water. Heterogeneous mixture are like salads. They do not combine. When you look at a salad you see the individual ingredients.