Everyday Mixtures

A lot of the things we use every day aren’t made of a single material — they’re made of several materials put together. When two or more materials come together to form something new, we call that a mixture. To figure out if something is a mixture, we observe its physical properties — things you can see, feel, or notice, like color, smell, and texture.

Example

Think of a fruit salad your family makes: it’s a mixture of apples, bananas, and oranges. Even after they’re mixed together, you can still recognize each fruit — the apple pieces keep their color and crunch, the banana slices keep their shape.

Another example is water with sand from a puddle in the yard. If you let the cup sit for a while, you’ll see the sand sink to the bottom, showing that these are two different materials mixed together, but they can still be told apart.

Let’s practice!

Is a glass of natural orange juice with pulp a mixture?

Answer: Yes! You can see little bits of pulp floating or settled in the juice, with a different texture from the liquid — showing that the juice is made of more than one material: the liquid and the pulp.