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A soft, silvery-white metal combines with a yellow gas to form a white crystal-like solid. What can be said about this change?.

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Final answer:

A soft metal and a yellow gas combine chemically to form a white crystalline solid, such as when sodium and chlorine react to create table salt, demonstrating that the properties of compounds differ significantly from those of the individual elements.

Step-by-step explanation:

The change described is a chemical reaction where a metal and a gas form a white crystalline solid. This reaction can be exemplified by the combination of sodium, a soft, silvery-white metal, with chlorine, a yellow-green gas, to produce sodium chloride, which is table salt. This transformation from elements to compound illustrates that the properties of substances in their combined state are markedly different from their free, or uncombined, state.

For instance, sodium is a highly reactive metal that can burn or explode upon contact with water or air, while chlorine is a toxic gas. Yet, when these elements are combined to form sodium chloride, they create a substance that is not only non-toxic but essential to life, highlighting a fundamental principle in chemistry that the properties of compounds can be greatly different from those of their constituent elements.

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