Sunday Express Skeleton 3Rd November
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There are 4 states of matter, solid, liquid, gas and plasma. Understanding these states involves understanding the balance between attractive electrical forces and kinetic energy.
In solids kinetic energy is not srtong enough to break chemical bonds so the bonds keep the atoms in place. In liquids kinetic energy breaks the bonds but the attractive electrical force is still strong enough to hold the atoms close to each other and the atoms or molecules slide over each other. In a gas the kinetic energy is strong enough to break any attractive force beteween molecules so the atoms bounce round ling ping pong balls (at 1600 km/hr if atmospheric gas at room temp), and will expand to fill any container.
The only difference between a gas and a plasma is that when a gas gets extremly hot the collisions between atoms are so violent that electrons get stripped away from the nucleus. This leaves a mixture of many positively charged nucleses and many electrons, which both move around at very fast speeds and have many thousands of collusions per second.
The sun is mostly plasma, so is part of the atmosphere in the northen lights or gas in a fluroscent light. See "plasma cutters" at www.howstuffworks for more info.
In solids kinetic energy is not srtong enough to break chemical bonds so the bonds keep the atoms in place. In liquids kinetic energy breaks the bonds but the attractive electrical force is still strong enough to hold the atoms close to each other and the atoms or molecules slide over each other. In a gas the kinetic energy is strong enough to break any attractive force beteween molecules so the atoms bounce round ling ping pong balls (at 1600 km/hr if atmospheric gas at room temp), and will expand to fill any container.
The only difference between a gas and a plasma is that when a gas gets extremly hot the collisions between atoms are so violent that electrons get stripped away from the nucleus. This leaves a mixture of many positively charged nucleses and many electrons, which both move around at very fast speeds and have many thousands of collusions per second.
The sun is mostly plasma, so is part of the atmosphere in the northen lights or gas in a fluroscent light. See "plasma cutters" at www.howstuffworks for more info.
As BigMacnFries says there are 4 states of matter found in nature. There are also two additional states the Einstein Bose condensate and the Fermionic condensate but to get them you have to reach unbelievably low temperatures.
Plasma science s fundamental to the development of fusion reactors such as ITER http://www.iter.org/ This is very very difficult but if it can be made to work it will be a nuclear power plant running on hydrogen with almost no nuclear waste.
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