The Fourth State of Matter

We all have heard of the three states of matter- solid, liquid and gas. But, have you heard of the fourth state of matter – the plasma state?

Solid state is when the temperature is cold, liquid state when temperature is moderate and gas state when the temperature is high. So, state of matter can be changed by change in temperature i.e. low temperature means solid while high temperature means liquid state. But state can also be changed by changing the pressure i.e. high pressure means solid state, low pressure means gas state and moderate pressure means liquid state.

So, as things get hotter, it turns into gas state but what happens if we made it hotter? Remember, solid state is when the molecules moves very slowly (almost negligible), liquid state is when the molecules can somewhat move freely and they are still bound together in groups so individual molecules cannot escape. And in the gas state, the movement in molecules are not based together and they move randomly in all directions. We see that as the temperature increases, the movement of molecules increases. Indeed, temperature is nothing but the measure of how fast the molecules or the electrons of an atom are moving.

Now, when we made the temperature so hot ( several millions of degree celcius), the molecules break apart into atoms and the electrons tied to the atoms also get enough energy to get knock off from their orbits. The electrons are now free to move as they are not tied to the nucleus. Since there are so many atoms in a single molecule, and there are way even more molecules in a matter, what we get is a swarm of nucleons ( neutrons + protons) / nucleus and electrons. Th overall electrical charge of a plasma is neutral as though the electrons are free, they don’t fly away from the nucleus very far, they just move randomly here and there like a swarm of bees so the negative charge of the electrons cancel with the position charge of protons.

In short, plasma is superheated  matter – so hot that the electrons are ripped away from the atoms forming an ionized gas.

Plasma state occurs in many day-to-day life activities. Plasma accounts for 99% of the material of the observable universe (not counting dark energy and dark matter). It is highly conductive to electricity. It can also be controlled by magnets as there are lots of free electrons.

Do you want to know what happens when we increase the temperature even further more than the plasma state? Click here to know it:

https://knowledgeglutton.home.blog/2021/05/25/what-is-the-hottest-state-of-matter/

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