Mixtures

     I have been trying to research about mixtures for quite a long time now I should say. My two main questions I was asking myself were, what are the main types of mixtures? What makes them different? I learned a lot of new things and i hope you will as well.
  
     Mixtures are substances held together by physical forces. Anything you can combine is a mixture and that should be pretty clear because of the word "mix". There are heterogeneous and homogeneous. You might not know what the difference is what they are, so here I go.
HOMOGENEOUS:
used to describe substances that look the same throughout. For example when you make Tang which is a powder which you mix with water, if you mix it very well it will be a homogeneous which means you wont be able to see the particles so simply you couldn't separate them. The mixture got its name from: "homo" which mean sameness.Here is a site that might help you visualize it more: 
http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/106Amixture.html

HETEROGENEOUS:
used to describe substances in which you can see more than one color or type of matter.For example, if you read my mixture which is the post under, mixing cereals with milk is a heterogeneous because you can separate the cereals from the milk. Also if you put a raisin in water it will not dissolve and you can always separate them.The world heterogeneous come from "hetero" which mean different.On the site which is under homogeneous you can find a picture of heterogeneous mixtures and how you can see the difference.
 
      Now that you know those two types of mixtures there are eve smaller mixtures that are mixture of either homogeneous or heterogeneous. These are:

• Solutions
• Emulsions
• Suspensions
• Colloidal Dispersions

SOLUTIONS:
  
   are mixtures by mixing a solute and a solvent. Solute is the substance that dissolves, solvent is the substance that does the dissolving. Solutions are homogeneous. An example of a solution mixture is water and salt. The water is the solvent and the salt is the solute.This is a site for solutions: 
http://www.chem4kids.com/files/matter_solution.html

SUSPENSIONS:
     are heterogeneous mixtures of a solid and a liquid in which the solid does not dissolve. This is like the cereals and milk. The solid which in that case are the cereals don't dissolve.

EMULSIONS:
  this mixture consists of two liquids that do not mix. Emulsions will settle into layers when they are left standing undisturbed. For example oil and water is an emulsion.

COLLOIDAL DISPERSIONS:
  mixtures with characteristics between a solution and a suspension.They are heterogeneous. They do not settle.


These are the major mixtures. It may be hard to remember but after all once you make some food and someone asks you what type of mixture it is you say: "It is ..."