Material property
In science, a property is anything that describes a material or substance. It is a characteristic of that material. For example, how hard the material is, its colour, or its shape. Elasticity is a property of rubber; in other words: rubber is elastic. A property may be a constant (always the same) or it may only appear when something changes, such as temperature.
Chemical properties include things like surface tension, pH, reactivity, allotropy. Conductivity is how able a material is to transport electric charge or heat.
Other examples
- Ductility, how easy it is to stretch a material
- Flammability, how easily a material will catch fire
- Luminosity, how bright an object is
- Malleability, how easy it is to re-shape a material without damaging it
- Permeability, how dense a magnetic field would be if current passes through it
- Tensile strength, how much force must be applied to a material to break it
- Viscosity, how thick a fluid is
