Talk:Physical property

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I noticed that 'shininess' was listed as a physical property. Would albedo be a better choice? Additionally, could 'scattering light' be replaced with refraction --69.134.204.227 (talk) 21:57, 3 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

Someone changed it to luster, obviously without discussion. I'm not familiar with albedo.. BohemianWikipedian^talk 10:56, 6 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

luster is refered to in chemistry text books and refers to textural quality or appearance. Reflectivity is the measure of the total amount of light reflected from the surface. Stephen Charles Thompson (talk) 08:35, 31 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

a physical property is not based on the amount of the substance. mass, volume, temperature, and shape are not properties... properties are characteristics that allow chemists to distinguish and organize between substances. physical properties include: density, melting point, boiling point, hardness, ductility, malleability, shine, structure (crystaline), and color (I believe that there are more, but I can't remember them at this time)

...nice work though

74.237.244.61 01:56, 12 November 2006 (UTC)Reply

Some philosophers would argue that love and anger are part of the mechanics of the universe in that they are causes of physical repercusions that are not themselves entirely physically caused. This contradicts the principle of the absolute causal closure of physics, but the latter is neither an indisputable fact, nor, incidentally, any proper article of physics itself, being rather metaphysics.

Also, anger can be perceived without this changing its identity, but is that supposed to make it physical? Arguably, it can even be measured in terms of how it feels, and this would not change its identity either. The same things can be said about love, which makes the defintion of a physical property in this article look rather poor given that it uses anger and love as examples non-physical properties. I realise that all this may seem pedantic, but something so general as a definition of a physical property, especially on wiki, should not be so open to contradiction, or at least be presented in a more qualified or tentative manner than a straight up front assertion. We don't want to be accidentally feeding people, especially earnest and enquiring young minds, anything worse than they deserve.

Ductility is a mechanical property not physical? Surely? Roobens (talk) 16:18, 5 March 2009 (UTC)Reply

If you were to be proven right (or wrong) by some 'definitions' deity, would it make any difference?

If one is going to be pedantic about 'definition', then the context may also well be required. One (macroscopic - hope we won't have to define that) mechanical engineer's 'ductility' may well surely be some crystallographer's 'ductility'. I happen to believe that all we are talking about anyway arises from wave functions representing charged or uncharged matter and the way in which those wave functions, perhaps well definable in due course for what are commonly called elementary 'particles', are distorted in higher 'matter' aggregations, for example crystalline material (==possessing 'ductility').

I suggest that for the purpose of Wikipedia at the level it commonly reaches, and even for most if not all other discussions, it is pragmatic and beholden upon us to regard 'mechanical properties' as belonging to the set called 'physical properties', as opposed to not belonging to that set of observations called 'physical properties'. I also wonder what 'material' difference, if any, this would make to people's lives and science if it were not to be regarded so, (e.g. perhaps by a Quantum Mechanic). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.115.110.74 (talk) 13:39, 25 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Ductility, hardness, strength, flexibility..these are all measured by exerting force upon the material. How else are you supposed to test it? What test method does not exert a force? Stephen Charles Thompson (talk) 08:39, 31 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

As mentioned above, albedo deserves adding, it is a property of objects used in astronomy: planets have albedo, it is a measure of how much they reflect light (e.g. the sun's). Albedo is a special case of reflectivity so I added that too. Diffraction and scattering are processes rather than properties, so don't think they should be added. Puzl bustr (talk) 10:35, 3 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

What about refraction, absorbtion, resonance? These are all valid properties as long as they are intrinsic to the material. If the internal (crystaline) structure causes marked scattering or diffraction then why not? Stephen Charles Thompson (talk) 08:44, 31 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

The first section makes useful definitions and statements clarifying what the article is about, but it doesn't provide any references. Could I request that the contributors add (preferrably inline) references. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia: other (good) physics articles have such references. In particular an article without references attracts a bot: Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot) in double square brackets. To improve this article beyond stub class we'd need references. It is well-written from my POV.Puzl bustr (talk) 10:49, 3 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

For example a quick Google located [1] which includes:

Dictionary of the Physical Sciences: Terms, Formulas, Data. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. (Q 123.E46 1987)

Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology. 2001. 18v. (Q123 .E497 2002 ) (B-Swain). Puzl bustr (talk) 12:07, 3 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

I added these; they may not be the best refs, but should start the ball rolling. Puzl bustr (talk) 12:20, 3 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Isn't energy a physical property? This is asserted in the wikipedia page about Energy, yet it is not in the list of physical properties. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Odysnes (talk • contribs) 14:33, 21 September 2014 (UTC) сReply

+1 to the question. And to add: is velocity (and impulse) of the body a physical property? According to a preambule it is , but I have some doubts... --Infovarius (talk) 15:17, 5 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

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The article reads:

The changes in the physical properties of a system can be used to describe its transformations or evolutions between its momentary states.

Please change from the above, "Its transformations or evolutions" to "Its transformations and modulations"

Explanation:

In the above sentence the term evolution in its current modern usage is not consistent with the nature of the subject. A Physical property is a consistent and measured behavior of an atom, element, chemical, molecule... The changes in matter never alter the default state or its properties and behaviors. While matter can be modified, modulate, or altered these changes are always consistent based upon the characteristic properties of the object and the forces of its environment and those that are acted upon it.

While the element Hydrogen can interact with other elements modulating into new arrangements. Hydrogen is a basic state of matter and always has the exact same properties in a given environment. Hydrogen will never go extinct and will always be the same.

Things that evolve, do not go Backwards to a lesser state. In biological evolutionary theory, a biological cell, organ, organ system or being never Un evolves into its base or default state. Whereas in the case of the properties of matter certain forces can cause matter to become more complex or return to its default state. In the Evolutionary model this does not occur and clearly this does occur in the Properties of matter as Water is converted to hydrogen to fuel vehicles via the conversion to electricity.

Reference pertaining to the Scientific study of the Modulation of Matter:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.00135 Dabbatrios (talk) 18:18, 9 March 2018 (UTC)Reply

That looks like a very narrow use of “modulation” which is scarcely relevant to this article. The meanings of “evolution” are not limited to the biological sense. Also see shibboleth. Just plain Bill (talk) 20:11, 9 March 2018 (UTC)Reply

 Partly done: Copy-edited to simplify text and both remove redundancy and improve parallelism. Transformations, modulations, and evolutions here simply mean "changes". Mixing biological concepts of "evolution" with usages of that term in non-biological contexts like this just increases confusion and hurts reader understanding. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:17, 11 March 2018 (UTC)Reply

The redirect Physicochemical property to the article Physical chemistry has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 February 4 § Let's get physico until a consensus is reached. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 00:00, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Is there actually a relevant conceptual difference between "physical property" and "physical quantity" that justifies two separate articles?

If so then the argument that only quantifiable versus merely measurable "physical properties" are "physical quantities" should be explained and illustrated by some examples.

Reasoning that "soft", "shiny" or "brittle" are properties which are not quantifiable might miss the point as these are physical properties only in a more general sense than in the context of physics which seems to be the scope of this article.

thanks, KaiKemmann (talk) 19:37, 7 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

After extensive discussion between a small number of editors at WP:RFD, we could not decide where best to target the redirects physicochemical propertyphysicochemical property and physicochemical propertiesphysicochemical properties, and there was no consensus to delete these. See: Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 April 5#Let's get physico. These terms were not defined on en-wiki and there was agreement that Physical chemistry was not the best target. I will be retargeting these to this article and I have added a brief definition to the lead (Special:Diff/1349996145). My hope is that the definition/description can be improved and won't be removed entirely. Otherwise, we are left with undefined redirects for terms that readers may encounter and search for. I have yet to find a concise, consensus definition for this term. It is frequently encountered in chemistry (and other) literature. It is usually undefined, defined indirectly by way of examples listed, or given a sort of "convenience" definition. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 21:10, 19 April 2026 (UTC)Reply