Matter is anything that has mass and takes up space.  Matter is everywhere!  If you can see something, or touch it, or smell it, it's matter!  In fact, you don't have to be able to see something for it to be matter.  For example, you can't see air, but it's matter.



Mass is the amount of matter that something contains.  The more matter that something contains, the greater its mass will be.  You can measure an object's mass using a balance. Balances use grams (g) to measure mass. Check out the balance below!















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Volume is the amount of space that matter takes up.  Some objects, like skyscrapers, take up a lot of space.  Other objects, like a baseball, take up less space.  But even the tiniest bit of matter, smaller than a speck of dust floating in the air, has volume because it takes up space.  You can measure an object's volume using measuring tools.  Measuring tools, like measuring cups, beakers, and cylinders, use milliliters (mL) to measure volume.  Check out some measuring tools below!

















Length is how long (or how tall) an object is.  You can measure length using a tape measure or a metric rule.  Tape measures and metric rules use centimeters (cm) or millimeters (mm) to measure length.  Check out the tape measure and metric ruler below!











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A property is something that describes matter.  There are two kinds of properties: physcial properties and chemical properties.

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A physical property is one that can be measured or observed with the senses without changing the matter into another kind of matter.  We can use mass, volume, and length to helps us describe an object, so these are all physical properties.  We can also use our senses to describe an object's color, smell, or texture, all of which are physical properties.













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A chemical property is one that describes how matter can change into another kind of matter.  A chemical property can only be observed when one kind of matter changes into another kind of matter.  For example, a chemical property of wood is that it can burn, but we can only observe this property when wood burns and turns into smoke and ashes.