The purpose of this lab was to use the knowledge gathered this year about chemical and physical interactions, mixtures, and single substances to separate a “sludge” into its components while demonstrating the Law of Conservation of Mass. Scientist determine the substances in an unknown mixture by looking at their chemical and physical properties and characteristics. It can be determined that one substance in the mixture was wood, because a characteristic of wood is that it floats, which the substance did. A physical property is a property of an element that can be seen without changing it. To observe a chemical property, a chemical reaction must be involved. In this lab, mostly physical properties were used in determining the substances. It
