Exploring Our Fluid Earth

This introduction to matter gives an overview of the concepts and activities explored in this unit and describes how these investigations build an understanding of ocean literacy.

Matter is anything that takes up space and can be weighed. There are many different types of matter and many ways to describe and classify matter.

There are four common states of matter. Changes between states can be physical changes or chemical changes. Chemical changes are reflected in a change in a substance’s chemical composition.

Chemical compounds can be formed through many types of chemical reactions. Decomposition, breaks the bonds between compounds to form simpler compounds or their elemental components.