they remain in the same shape and volume. The particles of a liquid are moving more rapidly, but they still exert a significant force on each other. These particles have the ability to flow past each other but not to escape from the attraction they feel for each other. The particles of a gas are moving very rapidly and feel very little attraction for each other. They fly off in every direction, preventing the gas from taking on either definite shape or volume.
Plasma is considered to be the fourth state of matter. Plasmas have been well studied in only the last few decades. They rarely exist on Earth, although they occur commonly in stars and other parts of the universe. A plasma is a gaslike mixture with a very high temperature. The temperature of the plasma is so high that the atoms of which it is made are completely ionized. That means that the electrons that normally occur in an atom have been stripped away by the high temperature and exist independently of the atoms from which they came. Plasma is, therefore, a very hot mixture of electrons and positive ions, the atoms that are left after their electrons have been removed.
Pages: 1 2 3 4