Physical property

A physical property is any measurable property the value of which describes a physical system's state. The changes in the physical properties of a system can be used to describe its transformations (or evolutions between its momentary states).

An object or substance can be measured or perceived without changing its identity. Physical properties can be intensive or extensive. An intensive property does not depend on the size or amount of matter in the object, while an extensive property does. In addition to extensiveness, properties can also be either isotropic if their values do not depend on the direction of observation or anisotropic otherwise. Physical properties are referred to as observables. They are not modal properties.

Often, it is difficult to determine whether a given property is physical or not. Color, for example, can be "seen"; however, what we perceive as color is really an interpretation of the reflective properties of a surface. In this sense, many ostensibly physical properties are termed as supervenient. A supervenient property is one which is actual (for dependence on the reflective properties of a surface is not simply imagined), but is secondary to some underlying reality. This is similar to the way in which objects are supervenient on atomic structure. A "cup" might have the physical properties of mass, shape, color, temperature, etc., but these properties are supervenient on the underlying atomic structure, which may in turn be supervenient on an underlying quantum structure.

Physical properties are contrasted with chemical properties which determine the way a material behaves in a chemical reaction.


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