Number of chemical states?

Question

At school i was taught there are only 3 states. Solid, liquid, or gas. How then, can liquid crystal be explained? Also, ut has been brought to my ateention that there are several others which exist in a grey area to all those without a PHd in Chemistry.

Answer 1

BEC, Solid, Liquid, Gas, and Plasma

those are the five basic ones which doesn't involve all those fuzzy states like superfluids.

Liquid crystal however is a liquid, otherwise it'd be called "Not quite liquid" crystal (NQLC). It just so happens that the large molecules involved in a liquid crystal behave similar to solid crystals.

Answer 2

I'm not sure what you mean besides liquid crystal; however, there are more then 3 states of matter but they are much less common then the aforementioned. Solid being defined to hold both shape and volume, liquid to take the shape of its container but maintain its volume, and gas to take the shape and volume of its containers. Another state that is often talked about is plasma. It's not really easy to explain it and if you are interested just type it into any search engine and lots of results will come up. Whole areas of physics and areas of research are set off to plasma physics which plays a role in many interesting areas especially in space. There are also superconductors and bose-einstein condensate and more. These areas can be rather complex and to really understand them can require years of study and research as many of them are fairly new. However, these are not really natural states and so they are not often talked about unless you talk to someone who does research or is interested in those areas.

Answer 3

There are generally FOUR states.

Solid, liquid, gas and plasma.

and also Bose-Einstein condensates...

Molecules in 'liquid crystals' tend to arrange themselves until they all point in the same general direction but, at the same time, the whole mass can flow like a liquid. It changes from a liquid to a solid when a charge is applied. It is not another state as it is one or the other...much the same as water can exist as a liquid or a solid

Answer 4

Unfortunately, we don't know the answer to this question.

For matter to be in a given "state", what we really mean is how each little molecule interacts with the other little molecules. If they pretty much go through life unimpeded but for a few collisions here and there, we call it a gas. If life is so confined that they can't even move, we call that a solid.

Now, physicists and chemists call the transitions from one state to another a "phase transition". It turns out that these transitions can happen when you increase the temperature, the pressure or both.

Water molecules, for instance, have at least 19 distinguishable "states" from a physical level! Most of these, fortunately for us, occur only at very high pressures or temperatures.

Check out http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/phase.html for the water "phase diagram", or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_transition for general info on phase transitions.

Answer 5

What you want to know is.....There are four (4) distinguishable states of matter that are generally recognized in science today, they are: Solid, Liquid, Gaseous, and Plasma (a high-temperature/high-energy state).

While there are other states being theorized and investigated by the science communities, these four are the most direct and immediate response to your request.

Hope this helps!

Answer 6

One interesting issue in regard to states is that there can be multiple solid states. A perfect example would be carbon. At standard temperature and pressure, the natural state of carbon is in the form of graphite. Diamond is an alternate state of carbon, which is oddly thermodynamically unstable. Kinetics keeps it from changing form quickly.

Answer 7

So far as I know there are only 3 states but some things are thixotropic (I think that's how you spell it...) i.e. they can be in 2 states at once or at either of 2 states at one temperature

Answer 8

agree four states, including plasma. A good example of plasma are the northern lights. Look in google for good definitions of plasma. BAsically a mix of charged particles.......

Answer 9

5 if you count the bose einstein condensate