ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by mix tapes.

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Anyone have a tape recorder we can borrow?

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No?

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A substance that consists of two or more things

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that are physically mixed together is a what?

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And here are potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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Okay, so the question might give it away here. After all,

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you can't spell "mixture" without "mix."

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So, yeah, our answer is option B.

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A mixture is when we have two or more different things that are, well,

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mixed together. Salt water is a mixture because, even though the salt

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dissolves in the water and you can't see it anymore,

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the salt molecules are still separate from the water molecules.

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Snack mix is another kind of mixture.

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Even though you can pick out each little pretzel

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and weird sesame-flavored thing out of the mix,

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when they're all mixed together in that bowl, well,

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yeah, that's a mixture. And a real cool party.

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Option A - a compound is when two or more elements

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are bonded together. It's like when hydrogen and oxygen

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bond together to form an entirely new substance,

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water, or H2O. Just like that.

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Water's completely different from hydrogen and oxygen.

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Otherwise, we wouldn't need oxygen tanks

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when we go scuba diving... Aquaman.

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All right, now we've got a couple of other words that look

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pretty similar to each other - solutes and solvents.

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Well, solutes and solvents are part of solutions.

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Solutions are mixtures that have all the components

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equally distributed throughout 'em.

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Think about salt water again.

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When the salt is dissolved in the water, it's mixed

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completely in the water.

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Now, if we dumped pebbles in the water, well, they'd just

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sit at the bottom and we wouldn't have a solution; we'd just have some wet pebbles.

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In solutions, the solute is what is dissolved.

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The solvent is what does the dissolving.

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So in our salt water example, salt is the solute

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and water is the solvent.

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Most of the time, the solvent in any solution is a liquid.

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The solute can be a solid,

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another liquid, or even a gas.

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Carbon dioxide is dissolved in water to make soda fizzy.

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That's why it makes you burp. [ burp ]

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Now we've just got to remember that not all mixes are good mixes.

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Even though we like both chocolate and hummus. [ yuck ]

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[ squirt ]

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