3 Examples of Chemical Properties of Elements
You use chemicals in your everyday life, from the shampoo you use to wash your hair to the milk you drink. These substances are formed from combinations of elements that react with one another. These elements have various chemical properties that allow them to undergo -- or prevent them from undergoing -- chemical reactions.
What Chemical Properties Are
The potential to go through chemical change through chemical reactions is a chemical property of matter. This potential depends on what elements are present in a molecule or compound, and it depends on their electrons and the types of bonds they can form. Chemical properties are observed only when one material is allowed to react with another substance.
Reactivity With Other Elements
Reactivity refers to the ability of a chemical to react with another chemical to form a new substance. When you put sodium in water, it sparks and explodes. Sodium is a highly reactive metal, which is a chemical property of that element. On the other hand, mercury is relatively nonreactive and only reacts with particular substances; its inability to readily react is its chemical property.
Another example of a chemical property of elements is toxicity, or the ability and strength of a substance to cause poisonous effects to living things. Fluorine is an extremely reactive gas; as it reacts violently with water, oxygen is released and fluorine combines with hydrogen to form hydrofluoric acid, which can cause severe burns. Radioactive elements like radium, plutonium and uranium have high toxicity, as they can cause cancer in humans.
The ability of an element to ignite or explode is called flammability, and this is another chemical property. Hydrogen gas is extremely flammable, and it will ignite readily in the presence of oxygen. Likewise, magnesium will burn in oxygen; in this exothermic reaction, light and heat are given off as the magnesium and oxygen combine to form magnesium oxide.
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