Matter on the Move
More than 2000 years ago in Greece, a philosopher named Democritus suggested that matter is made up of tiny particles too small to be seen. He thought that if you kept cutting a substance into smaller
and smaller pieces, you would eventually come to the smallest possible particles—the building blocks of matter. Many years later, scientists came back to Democritus’ idea and added to it. The theory they developed is called the of matter.
There are five main ideas in the particle model:
1. All substances are made of tiny particles.
2. All particles in a pure substance are the same. Different pure substances are made of different particles.
3. The particles have spaces between them.
4. The particles are always in motion – vibrating, rotating and (in liquids and gases) moving from place to place. The speed of the particles increases when temperature increases and speed decreases when temperature decreases.
5. The particles in a substance are attracted to one another. The strength of the attractive force depends on the type of particle.
The Particle Model of Matter
The States of Matter
Solid – Has a definite shape and volume.
Liquid – Has a definite volume, but no definite shape.
Gas – Has neither a definite shape or volume.
Plasma - Plasma is the fourth state of matter. Many places teach that there are three states of matter; solid, liquid and gas, but there are actually four. The fourth is plasma. To put it very simply, a plasma is an ionized gas, a gas into which sufficient energy is provided to free electrons from atoms or molecules and to allow both species, ions and electrons, to coexist.
The funny thing about that is, that as far as we know, plasmas are the most common state of matter in the universe. They are even common here on earth.
The sun, like most stars, is a great big ball of plasma.
Beam - The fifth state of matter above plasma is beam. The difference between beam and the other four states is that the particles of solid, liquid, gas and plasma all move randomly in all directions whereas the particles of beam move harmoniously in one direction.
Zero State Of Matter - Other than these five states of matter, there is a state lower than all these states. It is the zero state of matter. The zero state of matter is known as the BEC or Bose-Einstein Condensate. It is the most condensed condensate of all matter.