Answer to Question #159019 in Chemistry for Jamar Jamison

Question

You come home from school and walk into a debate where participants cannot decide if CO2, a green smoothie, and Cl are a mixture, a compound, or an element. As a chemist, you know the right answer. Explain which category each substance falls under and how you arrived at that conclusion

Answer 1

In the list : CO₂, a green smoothie and Cl , the categories are:

CO₂ is a compound

a green smoothie is a mixture and

Cl is an element.

According to the definition, an element is a substance consisting of only one type of atom. In the list, only Cl consists of only one type of atom. This atom is chlorine.

Then, we know that a pure chemical substance consisting of two or more different chemical elements is a compound. CO₂, as indicates its formulae, contains carbon and oxygen atoms, but only CO₂ molecules are present, so it is a compound.

Finally, a green smoothie is a mixture, because it consists of different substances : water, sugars etc. Moreover, it is a heterogeneous mixture, because the it contains different phases and is not uniform.