Changing+States+of+Matter

__**Activity**__ Make a booklet to show your understanding of states of matter. You can publish this in keynote/poweroint, or in your books. You need to inlcude: 1. A title page 2. A page on solids, including a description and at least 5 different pictures of what solids could be. 3. A page on liquids, including a description and at least 5 different pictures of what liquids could be. 4. A page on gases, including a description and at least 5 different pictures of what gases are. 5. A bilbliography showing the sites you got your information from. There are five main states of matter. Solids, liquids, gases, plasmas, and Bose-Einstein condensates are all different states of matter. Each of these states is also known as a phase. Elements and compounds can move from one phase to another phase when special **physical forces** are present. One example of those forces is temperature. The phase or state of matter can change when the temperature changes. Generally, as the temperature rises, matter moves to a more active state.
 * || =States of Matter=

Phase describes a physical state of matter. The key word to notice is physical. Things only move from one phase to another by physical means. If energy is added (like increasing the temperature or increasing pressure) or if energy is taken away (like freezing something or decreasing pressure) you have created a physical change.

One compound or element can move from phase to phase, but still be the same substance. You can see water **vapor** over a boiling pot of water. That vapor (or gas) can **condense** and become a drop of water. If you put that drop in the freezer, it would become a solid. No matter what phase it was in, it was always water. It always had the same chemical properties. On the other hand, a chemical change would change the way the water acted, eventually making it not water, but something completely new. ||  || =Changing States of Matter= All matter can move from one state to another. It may require very low temperatures or very high pressures, but it can be done. Phase changes happen when certain points are reached. Sometimes a liquid wants to become a solid. Scientists use something called a **freezing point** to measure when that liquid turns into a solid. There are physical effects that can change the freezing point. Pressure is one of those effects. When the pressure surrounding a substance goes up, the freezing point also goes up. That means it's easier to freeze the substance at higher pressures. When it gets colder, most solids shrink in size. There are a few which expand but most shrink. Now you're a solid. You're a cube of ice sitting on a counter. You dream of becoming liquid water. You need some **energy**. Atoms in a liquid have more energy than the atoms in a solid. The easiest energy around is probably heat. There is a magic temperature for every substance called the melting point. When a solid reaches the temperature of its melting point it can become a liquid. For water the temperature has to be a little over zero degrees Celsius. If you were salt, sugar, or wood your melting point would be higher than water. The reverse is true if you are a gas. You need to lose some energy from your very excited gas atoms. The easy answer is to lower the surrounding temperature. When the temperature drops, energy will be sucked out of your gas atoms. When you reach the temperature of the condensation point, you become a liquid. If you were the steam of a boiling pot of water and you hit the wall, the wall would be so cool that you would quickly become a liquid. Finally, you're a gas. You say, "Hmmmm. I'd like to become a plasma. They are too cool!" You're already halfway there being a gas. You still need to tear off a bunch of electrons from your atoms. Eventually you'll have bunches of positively and negatively charged particles in almost equal concentrations. When the ions are in equal amounts, the charge of the entire plasma is close to **neutral**. (A whole bunch of positive particles will cancel out the charge of an equal bunch of negatively charged particles.) A plasma can be made from a gas if a lot of energy is pushed inside. All of this extra energy makes the neutral atoms break apart into positively and negatively charged ions and free electrons. They wind up in a big gaseous ball. ||  ||