What is matter? Matter is something that has mass and occupies space. There are five states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, plasma and Bose-Einstein Condensate. In this chapter, we find out more about the five states of matter.
Solid
What is a solid? A solid is one of the state of matter which have a definite volume and a definite shape. It has three properties:
- The tiny molecules or atom inside a solid are closely packed together.
- Because solids have thermal energy, their atoms vibrate. However, this movement is very small, and cannot be observed or felt under ordinary conditions.
- If sufficient force is applied, either of these properties can be disrupted, causing permanent deformation.
By the way, the smallest known solids are aerogels. The lightest aerogel produced has a density of 1.9 mg/cm³ or 1.9 kg/m³ (1/530 the density of water). Small.
Liquid
A liquid is something that have a definite volume but did not have a definite shape. Try this simple experiment at home to prove that liquids did not have a definite shape:
- Take a glass of water.
- Pour the water in the glass to another container (Make sure that the shape of the container is different from the glass).
- See how the water change shape!
Here are some notes to take down.They are all about liquid:
- When the temperature of a liquid reaches to the boiling point, it evaporates and become a gas. When it reaches the freezing point, it freeze and becomes a solid.
- The volume of a quantity of liquid is fixed by its temperature and pressure.
- Water between 0 °C and 4 °C is a notable exception; this is why ice floats.
Gas
What is gas? Gas is a state of matter. It can be nitrogen, helium, oxygen or hydrogen. Hydrogen is the lightest gas. However, it is flammable. The famous Hindenburg was filled with hydrogen. No one knew what caused the hydrogen to catch fire and burn down the Hindenburg. Some thought that it was static electricity. Others thought that there was a bomb in the airship.
Characteristics of gases are:
- Gases have no definite shape and definite volume. When you pump in 500ml of air into a tank which can only contain 300ml, the air pumped inside the tank will be 300ml because the particles of the air will move closer to one another and the volume of the air would become smaller
- Gases consists of a collection of particles such as molecules, atoms, ions and electrons
Plasma
Plasma is a partially ionized gas, in which a certain proportion of electrons are free rather than being bound to an atom of molecule. It is the far most common phase of matter in the universe, both by mass and by volume. All stars are made of plasma, and even the space between the stars is filled with plasma. In our solar system, Jupiter accounts for most of the non-plasma.
There are three types of plasma, the artificially-produced plasmas, the terrestrial plasmas and space plasmas.
Bose-Einstein Condensate
A Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter of bosons. It cools to temperatures very near to absolute zero. It was first predicted by Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein in 1924-1925. Seventy years later, the first gaseous condensate was produced by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman in1995 at the University of Colorado, using a gas of rubidium atoms cooled to 170 nanokelvin (nK).They were awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics in Sweden for their achievements.
Tags: Bose-Einstein Condensate, Gas, Liquid, matter, Plasma, Solid
