QuickCheck: Is there a fourth state of matter?

IT IS common knowledge that matter can be lumped into three states: solid, liquid and gas. What most people don't realise is that there is a fourth state.

Is this true?

Verdict:

TRUE

Matter's fourth state is called plasma and it is basically super-heated ions an electrons.

It can shift between its four different states depending of how much energy, or heat, is introduced to or removed from it.

As an example, ice is water at its lowest energy state where its individual atoms are moving so little that it they can be compacted together.

Warm ice up to over 0^oc and its atoms will have enough energy to move and repel other atoms away from it that it becomes liquid.

Now if you were to heat it up to 100^oc and now the individual atoms of water are free from each so it becomes a gas.

Turn the temperature up even more, we're talking surface of the sun temperatures here, and the individual atoms of hydrogen and oxygen will split from each other before separating into its component parts of super-heated ions and electrons.

Plasma is sometimes called ionised gas but it is not quite right to think of it as a kind of "gas."

Plasma is more like a flame. Lightning, fire, the sun, and the tail of comets are all plasmas.

References:

1. https://www.advancedplasmasolutions.com/what-is-plasma/

2. https://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-disasters/lightning2.htm