Question

How would you contrast intensive and extensive physical properties?

Answer 1

As we know that the intensive property and the extensive property are actually physical properties of matter which may or may not depend on the amount of matter that is present in a system.

Complete step-by-step answer:
As we already know that the intensive property of a matter are those properties of a system which are independent of the amount of matter present in the system and some common examples of this type of physical property of matter involves:Pressure, Density, Refractive index, Surface tension, Viscosity, Temperature, Colour, Concentrations, Mole fraction, Specific energy, Molar volume, Molar enthalpy, molar internal energy, molar Gibbs free energy, electrical resistivity, electric potential, electric field and boiling point etc.

Next we have Extensive properties of matter which are those properties of the system that depend on the amount of matter present and some examples of this type of property involves: Mass, Volume, length, mole, electrical resistance, heat capacity, enthalpy, internal energy, entropy and Gibbs’ free energy.

An intensive property can be converted to extensive property like the ratio of mass and volume of a substance can be defined as the density of that substance and we know that density is intensive. But these types of properties are not helpful in identifying the sample because they can change if the conditions are changed.

So, in conclusion we can say that if X and Y are two extensive properties then their sum would be equivalent to an extensive property only, similarly is the case with their difference and multiplication but their division would result into an intensive property.

Note: Remember that the intensive properties can be used to identify the sample because it does not depend on the amount of the sample and they do not even change according to the conditions.