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States of MatterSarah Jones

More than 2000 years ago a Greek philosopher called Democritus suggested this hypothesis:

All matter, living and non-living, is made of tiny particles too small to be

seen.His idea was that if you kept cutting something into smaller and smaller pieces you would eventually come to the smallest possible particles - the building blocks of matter. He used the work atomos (which in Greek means ‘cannot be divided’) to describe these tiniest particles.

The Particle Theory of Matter

All MATTER is made up of tiny particles (ATOMS) that are constantly moving.

Solids, liquids and gases have two important properties - they all

have mass and they all take up space.

SolidsSolids include - steel, books and most of the objects you can see.

They all have mass and occupy space.

The shape and volume of most solids cannot be easily changed.

Powders are also solids but their shape can be

changed.

LiquidsWater, milk and oil are all examples of liquids.

The volume of a liquid does not change, but its shape can.

Liquids take on the shape of the container they are in.

Gases The air around us is a gas.

Gases have mass and occupy space.

Gases do not have a fixed shape of volume.

A gas fills its container, no matter what the shape or size of the container e.g. a balloon.

Gases can be compressed.

Plasma

Plasma makes up 99% of the Universe.

It consists of charged particles that are even further apart than the particles in a gas.

You don’t see much plasma on Earth because it requires very high temperatures. The Sun is made of plasma, as are all the stars. Lightning is a type of plasma that occurs naturally on Earth.

Melting

Boiling

Diffusion