FACTOID # 38: Japan's water has a very high dissolved oxygen concentration - but not enough to prevent drowning in the bath.
 
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Encyclopedia > Physical properties

1) A physical property is an aspect of an object that can be experienced using one of the five human senses: touch, taste, smell, sight or sound, or, in an extended sense, detected through any measuring device.


2) Properties can be isotropic or anisotropic.


3) In Quantum mechanics, physical properties are referred to as observables.


4) Philosophically speaking, it is actually quite hard to pin down what correctly consitutes a physical property. Color, for example, can be "seen", however, what we perceive as color is really an interpretation of the reflective properties of a surface. In this sense, many ostensibly physical properties are termed as supervenient. A supervenient property is one which is actual (for example, color does depend on the reflective properties of a surface - it is not simply imagined), but is secondary to some underlying reality.


This is similar to the way in which objects are supervenient on atomic structure. A "cup" might have the physical properties of mass, shape, color, temperature etc, but these properties are supervenient on the underlying atomic structure, which may in turn be supervenient on an underlying quantum structure.


In the common sense, physical properties can be separated from nonphysical properties. Typically a nonphysical property is associated with a living being. Anger, love, etc, are not things which are part of the mechanics of the universe, but terms we use to discuss mental states.


Literally, the physical properties of an object are defined by the theory of physics being used in context. In a traditional Newtonian sense, the physical properties of an object are mass, shape, velocity and location. There may be more (a physicist might care to enhance the accuracy of this section). In an Einstein-relative model, the physical properties of an object might be different.


The common sense understanding of a physical property is roughly Newtonian.


  Results from FactBites:
 
SIRCh :: Physical Property Information (356 words)
Units and Fundamental Constants in Physics and Chemistry
Subvolume a: Units in Physics and Chemistry, 1991
Subvolume b: Fundamental Constants in Physics and Chemistry, 1992
Thermodynamic Information (3581 words)
Property data of 6,600 pure compounds and 24,000 mixtures: tables of PVT properties, phase equilibria, transport and surface properties, caloric properties, acoustic, and optical properties.
Although physical property data are published in many places, these are some of the journals that tend to publish articles focusing on experimental and calculated property data and thermodynamics.
Published property data are only as reliable as the researchers who reported them in the first place.
  More results at FactBites »

 

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