Question

An extensive property is:
A) A property that changes when the size of the sample changes.
B) a property that doesn’t change when you take away some of the sample.
C) both.
D) none.

Answer 1

Hint: There are two types of properties. Some are dependent on the sample quantity while the others are independent of that.

Complete step by step solution:
When we talk about properties of a material sample we generally think about mass, volume area density, etc.
All these properties are classified into two categories. They are:
1)Intensive properties.
2)Extensive properties.

Intensive properties:
An intensive property is a bulk property, meaning that it is a local physical property of a system that does not depend on the system size or the amount of material in the system. Examples of intensive properties include temperature, refractive index, density and hardness of an object.
If the system is divided by a wall that is permeable to heat or to matter, the temperature of each subsystem is identical; if a system is divided by a wall that is impermeable to heat and to matter, then the subsystems can have different temperatures. Likewise for the density of a homogeneous system; if the system is divided in half, the extensive properties, such as the mass and the volume, are each divided in half, and the intensive property, the density, remains the same in each subsystem.

Extensive properties:
An extensive property is a physical quantity whose value is proportional to the size of the system it describes, or to the quantity of matter in the system. For example, the mass of a sample is an extensive quantity; it depends on the amount of substance. The related intensive quantity is the density which is independent of the amount. The density of water is approximately 1 gram per liter whether you consider a drop of water or a swimming pool, but the mass is different in the two cases.
Dividing one extensive property by another extensive property generally gives an intensive value—for example: mass (extensive) divided by volume (extensive) gives density (intensive).
Thus we come to know that extensive properties depend on the number of particles in the sample so if the size of the particles is changed the number of the particles will vary as well. So the extensive properties change if the size of the sample is changed.

Therefore the answer is option A.

Note:The ratio of two extensive properties is an intensive property.
The intensive properties are independent of the quantity of sample.