Science Common Sense

103 - What are the different states of matter?

There are four main states of matter:

1. Solid: Things that keep their shape, like a toy or a block of ice.
2. Liquid: Things that take the shape of their container, like water or juice.
3. Gas: Things that have no shape and can fill up a space, like the air we breathe.
4. Plasma: A special state of matter that's like a gas, but the particles are all charged and moving around really fast, like lightning or stars.

But sometimes we also talk about two more states:

1. Bose-Einstein Condensate: A really, really cold liquid that behaves weirdly.
2. Fermionic Condensate: Another really, really cold liquid that also behaves in strange ways.

However, for most everyday things, we just focus on the first four.