I want to learn States of matter

Welcome! I'm excited to help you explore the states of matter. It's a fascinating topic because it explains everything we can touch, see, and breathe around us.

Before we dive in, I'd love to know a little more about where you are starting from so I can customize our session. What is your current level of knowledge regarding states of matter, and is there a specific reason or context for why you are learning about this today?

I'm a complete beginner, just learning for fun!

Your path

Properties of Solids, Liquids, and Gases

Phase Changes

That is wonderful! Learning just for the fun of it is the absolute best way to explore science, and I promise you we are going to have a blast with this. Let's start right at the beginning by defining what actually is.

If you look around you, every single physical thing you see is made of matter, but it doesn't all behave the same way. To help make sense of it all, scientists group matter into three main forms that we encounter in our daily lives: solids, liquids, and gases. Think about water, for example. In its ordinary form, it is a liquid you can drink. But if you freeze it into an ice cube, it becomes a solid. And if you boil it on the stove, it turns into steam, which is a gas. Even though it is the exact same substance, it can show up in three completely different states!

Let's continue and see what makes these three states different.

To understand what truly makes these three states different, we have to zoom in incredibly close—so close that we can see the tiny, invisible building blocks called that make up all matter.

Imagine these particles as tiny, bouncy spheres that are constantly moving. They never, ever sit completely still! How these particles behave depends on a continuous tug-of-war between two forces:

Attraction: How strongly the particles cling to each other.
Energy: How fast the particles are moving and shaking, which tries to push them apart.

Depending on who is winning this tug-of-war, the matter ends up as a solid, a liquid, or a gas.

Three side-by-side containers displaying the particle arrangements of a solid, a liquid, and a gas.

I've started generating an interactive diagram above so you can see this in action! Let's explore how this particle behavior changes across the three primary states.

Continue to the three states of matter

Let's dive right into the three states of matter to see who wins the tug-of-war in each one!

The Three Primary States

When attraction wins the tug-of-war, we get a solid. In a solid, the particles are together in a neat, orderly pattern. They don't have enough energy to slide past one another, so they just sit in place and vibrate. Because of this rigid structure, solids hold their shape and volume no matter what container you put them in—like a wooden block or an ice cube. When energy starts to catch up, we get a liquid. Here, the particles have enough energy to partially break free from the strong attraction. They are still close together, but now they can slide, roll, and flow past each other. This is why a liquid can change its shape to match the container it's in, while still keeping a constant volume. When energy completely wins, we get a gas. The particles have so much energy that they overcome attraction entirely. They zoom around at high speeds, flying in all directions and bouncing off everything. Because they are so far apart, gases will expand to fill up whatever container they are placed in, leaving lots of empty space between the particles.

Can you start over and add plasma to the other 3

You've got it! Let's hit the reset button and bring all four states of matter together from the very start. This is going to make the big picture so much clearer.

The Four States of Matter

When we look at the universe, matter doesn't just stop at solids, liquids, and gases. There is a super-energetic fourth state called that actually makes up over 99% of the visible universe! To see how all four of these states fit together, we can look at what happens to their particles as we keep adding more and more energy:

Solids (Low Energy): The particles are packed tightly together, vibrating in place. They hold a rigid shape and a fixed volume.
Liquids (Medium Energy): The particles loosen up and can slide past one another. They take the shape of their container but keep a fixed volume.
Gases (High Energy): The particles break completely free and zoom around wildly. They expand to fill any shape and volume.
Plasma (Extreme Energy): When we heat a gas to extreme temperatures, something incredible happens. The gas particles collide so violently that their electrons get ripped right off!

This energetic process of turning a gas into a plasma is called . Because the electrons have been separated from their atoms, plasma isn't made of neutral particles anymore. Instead, it is a swirling, glowing soup of positively charged ions and free-roaming, negatively charged electrons. This charged nature is what makes plasma behave entirely differently from a normal gas. Because of all those free-floating charges, plasma can conduct electricity and reacts strongly to magnetic fields, whereas regular gases do neither of those things.