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‘Plasma’ was a word kept deep inside the crevices of high end research and technology which has, in recent times been let out into the civilian life by its introduction into the consumer market. Plasma has been mentioned before as being the fourth state of matter, but how exactly is this ‘state’ of matter defined? Matter, as studied at school level can be defined as the arrangement of its constituent atoms. For example, we can take an ice cube which is essentially a solid and the atoms are nicely packed together close to each other without much energy to move about. They don’t vibrate much and are arranged symmetrically in periodic repeating patterns. Now I add some energy to this cube. What happens then? The atoms begin to have more degrees of freedom, they can move around freely and are weakly bonded with each other. The ice melts and the liquid you have, takes the shape of the container. This state doesn’t have any shape associated with it. Now, you decide to add more energy to this liquid. The atoms can absorb this energy and become free from whatever weak bonds they had and you create the gaseous state. Gas molecules no longer feel the need to stick close to each other and can pretty much wander about in whatever space they get. The boundary now spreads to the whole room. But keep in mind that the number of atoms hasn’t changed so if you decide to cool the whole room you won’t have a room size ice cube but just the icecube you began with. Now you take the water vapor and give it more energy, enough to ionize it. Now you finally have a plasma.
A plasma is similar to a gas but more free. In plasma, you have ionized the atoms of the gas and instead of a cloud of atoms floating around, you have a cloud of negatively and positively charged particles (electrons and ions). Depending on the amount of energy added, the size of the ion varies. Now, since these constituents of a plasma are charged, they become reactive to an externally applied electric or magnetic field. How they will react depends on the nature of the field you apply. Plasma’s don’t have any shape but can form structures when subjected to certain fields (e.g. Plasma globes, welding arcs etc.)
At each transit stage, energy has either been added and drastically altered the nature of the substance we were working with. This is how we define the states of matter. We went from tightly packed atoms to atoms that slip and slide besides each other but don’t go far from each other, to atoms that fly away anywhere, to atoms that have been broken into smaller bits. It is possible to in fact, add more energy to get even more exotic states of matter (to break the neutrons and protons in the nucleus to get quark-gluon plasma). Conversely, you can take away energy from solids (cooling down) to get more phases (like Bose-Einstein condensates, where atoms lump together into a super atom and get a variety of quantum effects seen with only much smaller atoms). Then there are also theoretical phases which have not been observed yet, like color superconductor’s etc.
The bottom line is that, a phase is a general state of matter that behaves in a certain way. Solids, liquids and gases are the phases one runs into most commonly. Plasma is another state of matter, often called the fourth state of matter because it is not difficult to observe this in basic settings. Plasma is characterized by the ionization of atoms, which otherwise behaves very much like a normal gas. Fire in a chemical reaction is a plasma. When you burn up something, you release a lot of energy and turning whatever you release into a gas. If the fire is hot enough, the gas will ionize and form a plasma
A plasma is similar to a gas but more free. In plasma, you have ionized the atoms of the gas and instead of a cloud of atoms floating around, you have a cloud of negatively and positively charged particles (electrons and ions). Depending on the amount of energy added, the size of the ion varies. Now, since these constituents of a plasma are charged, they become reactive to an externally applied electric or magnetic field. How they will react depends on the nature of the field you apply. Plasma’s don’t have any shape but can form structures when subjected to certain fields (e.g. Plasma globes, welding arcs etc.)
At each transit stage, energy has either been added and drastically altered the nature of the substance we were working with. This is how we define the states of matter. We went from tightly packed atoms to atoms that slip and slide besides each other but don’t go far from each other, to atoms that fly away anywhere, to atoms that have been broken into smaller bits. It is possible to in fact, add more energy to get even more exotic states of matter (to break the neutrons and protons in the nucleus to get quark-gluon plasma). Conversely, you can take away energy from solids (cooling down) to get more phases (like Bose-Einstein condensates, where atoms lump together into a super atom and get a variety of quantum effects seen with only much smaller atoms). Then there are also theoretical phases which have not been observed yet, like color superconductor’s etc.
The bottom line is that, a phase is a general state of matter that behaves in a certain way. Solids, liquids and gases are the phases one runs into most commonly. Plasma is another state of matter, often called the fourth state of matter because it is not difficult to observe this in basic settings. Plasma is characterized by the ionization of atoms, which otherwise behaves very much like a normal gas. Fire in a chemical reaction is a plasma. When you burn up something, you release a lot of energy and turning whatever you release into a gas. If the fire is hot enough, the gas will ionize and form a plasma