MATTER
I. Introduction
Matter is everything around you. Matter is anything made of atoms and molecules. Matter is anything that has a mass. Matter can be as big as an elephant or as tiny as a grain of sand.1
Matter is also related to light and electromagnetic radiation. Even though matter can be found all over the universe, you usually find it in just a few forms. As of 1995, scientists have identified five states of matter. They may discover one more by the time you get old.
Matter is commonly said to exist in four states (or phases): Solid, Liquid, Gas, and Plasma.However, advances in experimental techniques have realized other phases, previously only theoretical constructs, such as Bose–Einstein condensates and Fermionic condensates.
II. Definition
“Matter is anything that has mass and occupies space.”
This is the widely definition of Matter that is used and were taught in school. True enough but not very satisfying.
Matter is the substance of which all material things are made. Matter can be directly experienced through the senses.7
III. Structure of Matter
What is matter made of? If you could see the smallest piece of matter, what would it look like? If you cut a piece of material into halves, and cut one of the halves into halves, and then continued cutting halves into halves - assuming you had a very fine blade and a very powerful microscope - could you continue cutting forever?
Until very recently, there was no microscope powerful enough to see the 'building blocks' of matter. But scientists were able to deduce that there were fundamental particles, which they called ATOMS (for INDIVISIBLE), by performing experiments such as firing electrons into targets and seeing how the pieces came out.
Atoms are extremely small particles, out of which all matter is made. They are the smallest particles of a chemical element that still have the properties of that element. Atoms are made of a nucleus that contains protons and neutrons, and electrons that orbit the nucleus.
A typical atom is about one millionth of a millimetre across - a million of them laid in a line would measure one millimetre across. The lightest atom is that of hydrogen, while one of the heaviest is that of uranium - about 200 times heavier than hydrogen.
Splitting large atoms into smaller ones or 'fusing' small ones to create larger ones, releases energy - this is what happens inside nuclear reactors and atom bombs (fission) and inside hydrogen bombs and the sun (fusion).
Atoms have a certain number of protons, neutrons and electrons. This is what makes one atom different from another.3
IV. Properties of Matter
The General Properties of Matter
If you think about the various observable properties of matter, it will become apparent that these fall into two classes. The Extensive Property and Intensive Property.
A. Extensive Property
Properties, such as Mass and Volume, that depend on the quantity of matter in the sample we are studying. Clearly, these properties, as important as they may be, cannot be by themselves be used to characterize a kind of matter.
