Question

What are compounds and mixtures?

Answer 1

A compound is a pure substance that consists of two or more elements chemically combined in a fixed proportion, that can be further subdivided into simpler substances by chemical means only.
Mixtures consist of two or more different elements and/or compounds - physically intermingled, can be separated into their constituent parts by physical means (e.g. distillation of liquids or separating magnetic and non-magnetic solids using a magnet), and have many of the properties of their constituent parts (e.g. the element "oxygen" is part of the mixture "air" and some of the properties of air are due to the oxygen).