The Makeup of Matter (1963)

The purpose of this film is to explain what matter is to define three kinds of matter. solids, liquids, and gases. To introduce us to molecules, atoms, and elements, and to show the difference between mixtures, and compounds. Mark's hobby is building things. Dad's hobby is taking pictures. Dad, why does a burned out flash bulb look cloudy? Well, let's open it up and find out. Now, a new flash bulb is filled with thin metal wire. See? And when the bulb flashes, that wire is changed into a powder. And most of the powder sticks to the inside of the bulb, and that's what makes the glass look cloudy. >> But Dad, how could the wire change into powder? >> Well, that's a good question. Let's see. How can I explain it? You see, both the wire and the powder are kinds of matter. Do you know what matter is? >> I think so. >> Well, to understand how the wire changed into powder, we need to know what matter is. Now, actually, everything around us is called matter. clouds in the sky, the trees and the flowers, the ground we walk on, the house we live in, the furniture in the house, the water we drink, the air we breathe, our clothes, even our bodies. Anything that takes up space and has weight is called matter. Now there are three main kinds of matter. One kind of matter is called solids. This knife. The metal wire in the glass bulb, the glass, the powder, and the handkerchief are all solid. Now, solids have a definite size and shape. When we put the knife in the bowl, knife keeps the same shape. Now, liquids are another kind of matter. For instance, a water is a liquid. Liquids have a definite size just as solids do. But watch. Liquids do not have a definite shape. They take the shape of the glass or whatever we put them in. The third kind of matter we call gases. The air all around us is a gas. Now you can't see gases but uh sometimes you can smell them. For instance, the uh odor from an onion is a gas. When we cut an onion, doesn't take long for that odor to reach our nose or our eyes. You see, gases have no definite size or shape. Whenever a gas is put into a container, the gas spreads out, taking the size and shape of the container. Now, since everything is made of matter, let's try to find out what matter is made of. For instance, let's take a sugar cube and see what it's made of. Now, when we crush the cube, we find that it's made up of many small particles of sugar. When the particles of sugar are ground up very fine, we have powdered sugar. Now, we have particles of sugar that are much smaller than before. And if we look at these tiny particles through a magnifying glass or a microscope, we find that they're made up of still tinier particles. If we could keep on breaking the sugar into still smaller and smaller particles, we would finally have the very smallest particles we could get that would still be sugar. These particles are called molecules. Molecules are so very tiny that we can't see them, not even through an ordinary microscope. A single grain of sugar is made up of trillions of molecules. And a molecule, remember, is the smallest particle of sugar we can get that is still sugar. But as small as molecules are, they're made up of particles still smaller, called atoms. Materials that are made of only one kind of atoms are called elements. Now uh some elements we see and handle every day. Copper, nickel, silver, gold and iron. In all there are 92 different kinds of elements found on the earth and scientists have made at least 11 others. Now elements are sometimes called the building blocks of matter. Uh you know how uh sometimes you can take a set of building blocks and put them together in all sorts of different ways to make all sorts of different things. Uh we ourselves can take different materials and sometimes form new materials. Let's try it with some sugar and sand. Now let's pour the same amounts of sand and sugar. You take the sugar, Mark. Pour it into the bowl. Now, sand is different from sugar because sand molecules and sugar molecules are made up of atoms of different elements. That's about it. Now, you take this spoon, Mark, and you stir it up together. When we stir the sugar and sand together, we don't form a new material. All we have is a mixture of the two materials. When we form a mixture, we can easily separate the two materials from each other. To separate the sand and the sugar, we pour water into the mixture and stir it up. The water dissolves the sugar. After a while, the sand will settle in the bottom. Now we can pour the water off into another container where the water will evaporate and we spread out the sand to dry. Well, now after all the water has evaporated, what do we have? >> Here we have sand. >> Mhm. Same sand we started with. And how about in this bowl? >> Sugar. >> That's right. So, we started with a mixture, but now we've separated that mixture into sugar and sand. The same materials with which we started. Now, let's try combining baking soda and vinegar. You can see that something is happening. We're forming a new material. We've taken a solid, baking soda, and a liquid, vinegar, and formed a gas called carbon dioxide. We can't see the carbon dioxide gas, but we can pour it out of the jar. When we pour it over a candle, it puts out the flame. Whenever we form a new material that looks and acts differently than the materials we started with, we call that new material a compound. And now, Mark, I'm ready to answer your question. The powder we found in the used flash bulb is called a compound. How was it formed? Well, to start with, a new flash bulb contains metal wire and a gas which we can't see called oxygen. When we take a picture, we send electricity through the bulb to make it flash. The heat produced makes the metal combine with the oxygen to form a new material. The new material is the powder which sticks to the inside of the glass. Now, this powder looks and acts differently than either the metal wire or the oxygen. So we call it a compound and that's why a burned out flashbulb looks cloudy. >> Now let's review what we have learned. Everything around us is made up of matter. Matter is anything that takes up space and has weight. There are three main kinds of matter. Solids, liquids, and gases. Solids have a definite size and shape. Liquids such as water have a definite size, but they take the shape of whatever we put them in. Gases such as air have no definite size or shape. When a gas is put into a container, the gas spreads out, taking the size and shape of the container. Molecules are the smallest particles of any material that are still that same material. Molecules are made up of even smaller particles called atoms. Materials that are made of only one kind of atoms are called elements. Elements are like building blocks of matter. They can be put together in all sorts of different ways to make hundreds of thousands of different things. Sometimes when we put two materials together, we get a new material. We call this new material a compound. A compound looks and acts differently from any of the materials it's made of. Sometimes when we put two materials together, we don't get a new material. All we get is a mixture of the same materials with which we started. Mark left this trowel in the garden for several days. It's rusty. Now, rust is a kind of matter, isn't it? But why is there rust on the tel? And what is rust made of? Do you know the answer?