Latest / Talking Science / States of Matter – Solid, Liquid, Gas and Beyond

Transcript

States of Matter – Solid, Liquid, Gas and Beyond · Talking Science

0:00
Picture this. You're sitting outside on a patio.
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On a warm, lazy afternoon. Hopefully with a cold
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drink. Exactly. You've got a tall glass of water
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in your hand, and right in the middle of it is
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this single, solitary ice cube. Just floating
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there. Right. And if you watch it for a few minutes,
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it shrinks. The sharp edges get, you know, a
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little soft, a little round, and eventually it
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just completely vanishes into the liquid. Yeah.
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It just becomes part of the water. But then,
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say an hour later, you take some of that exact
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same water, you put it in a kettle on the stove.
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and it completely disappears again, but this
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time into the air as invisible steam. It is such
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an incredibly ordinary sequence of events. I
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mean, you see it every day. But today, our mission
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for this deep dive is to take that totally ordinary
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melting ice cube and that boiling kettle and
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basically completely shatter your understanding
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of what is actually happening. Because while
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we all learn about solid, liquid, and gas in
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school, you know, the classic three states of
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matter, those are really just the prologue to
1:00
a much, much wilder story. They really are. So
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we are going to build our understanding from
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the ground up today. We're going to look at what
1:07
happens at the microscopic level, why boiling
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points are actually kind of an illusion, and
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why the universe's most common state of matter
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is likely one you rarely even think about. Yeah,
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exactly. We're going to look way past the everyday
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surface and focus entirely on the fascinating
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why behind these things. By the time we finish,
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you will... You'll never look at a glass of ice
1:31
water the same way again. Okay, let's unpack
1:33
this. Because to understand the truly bizarre
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states of matter out in the far reaches of the
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universe, we really have to start right in front
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of it. Start with the basics, yeah. Right. We
1:44
have to define what fundamentally makes a solid,
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a solid, and then liquid, a liquid. So if we
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stop looking at the ice cube itself and zoom
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way, way down to the microscopic level, what
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is actually going on? Well, right down at the
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bottom. Every substance is built from a huge
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number of tiny particles, either individual atoms
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or molecules, which are really just groups of
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atoms bonded together. And the key thing to realize
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is that these particles are never perfectly still.
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They're constantly vibrating, jostling, moving
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around. Even in a solid. Even in a solid. The
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state that a substance is in, whether it's solid,
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liquid, or gas, is entirely the result of this
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endless tug of war. A tug of war between... Explain
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kinetic energy and attractive forces. So the
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kinetic energy is the energy of motion. That's
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the energy pushing the particles to move around,
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to vibrate and spread apart from one another.
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Right. They want to move. Exactly. But working
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directly against that. you have attractive chemical
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forces pulling the particles together, trying
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to lock them in place. So in a solid, like our
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ice cube, I'm guessing the attractive forces
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are winning the tug -of -war. Oh, they're winning
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decisively. The attractive forces are so strong,
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and the kinetic energy is relatively low, so
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the particles are just locked into fixed positions.
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But you said they're not perfectly still. Right.
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They aren't frozen dead still. They are constantly
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jiggling and vibrating in place, but they just
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don't have enough energy to break free of that
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grip and swap places with their neighbors. Oh,
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okay. That locked -in grid is what scientists
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call a crystal lattice. Well, if it forms a perfect
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repeating pattern anyway. Or amorphous, if it's
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all jumbled together. But either way, they are
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locked tight. Which, I mean, that perfectly explains
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why a solid holds its shape. If I take an ice
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cube out of my glass and put it on the table,
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it stays an ice cube. Exactly. It has a fixed
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shape and a fixed volume because the molecules
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physically cannot leave their assigned seats.
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Right. But then you leave that ice cube on the
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patio, you add heat energy from the sun, and
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that heat translates directly into kinetic energy.
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So they start jiggling faster. The particles
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start vibrating harder and faster, and eventually...
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They gain enough kinetic energy that those attractive
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forces just can't hold them rigidly in place
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anymore. The grip finally loosens. And it becomes
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a liquid. Yes. In a liquid, the particles stay
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close together. They're literally touching their
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neighbors, which is why a liquid still takes
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up a fixed volume. I mean, you can't compress
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water easily. Right, right. But because the rigid
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bonds are broken, the particles can now slide
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past one another. the exact shape of the bottom
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of its container. And then if we move from the
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patio to the stove and just keep adding more
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and more heat energy, the kinetic energy completely
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overpowers the attractive forces entirely. Complete
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domination. The particles just fly apart, moving
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totally independently as a gas. They fill whatever
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shape and volume is available. If I release a
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gas in a room, it spreads out evenly to fill
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every corner. Yeah, a really great way to visualize
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this whole sequence is to imagine a crowded dance
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floor. Oh, I like this. Imagine a solid as a
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dance floor where everyone is standing in a highly
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ordered fixed formation. You're holding hands
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with the people next to you. You can sway to
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the music. You can rock back and forth. That's
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the kinetic vibration. Exactly. That's the vibration.
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But you aren't changing your exact spot on the
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floor. So if a solid is like a synchronized line
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dance and a gas is where everyone has just left
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the building and they're spread out across the
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sprawling outdoor festival grounds, moving totally
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freely, is a liquid essentially just a really
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polite mosh pit? Yes, that is perfect. In that
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liquid mosh pit, you are still packed in tightly.
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You're bumping shoulders with everyone, taking
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up the same amount of total floor space as the
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line dancers did. But you're moving around. Right.
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You're wandering around, squeezing past people,
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swapping neighbors constantly. You don't have
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a fixed arrangement anymore. So changing states
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is fundamentally all about pumping energy into
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the system to change the dynamic on the dance
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floor. But there is a deeply surprising secret
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about what happens to temperature during that
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process, right? There really is. But first, we
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probably need to define what temperature actually
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is. Okay, lay it on me. It's not some mysterious
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invisible quality. Temperature is simply a direct
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measurement of the average kinetic energy of
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the particles in a system. It is literally just
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a measure of how fast those microscopic things
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are moving. Right. Okay, so let's trace the sequence
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on the stove. I put a block of ice in a pan and
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turn on the heat. I'm pumping energy into it.
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The particles vibrate more violently, so the
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temperature goes up. Yep. Eventually, they break
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free, sliding past each other. That's melting.
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I keep heating that newly formed liquid water.
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The molecules move faster and faster. The temperature
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goes up until they break the grip entirely and
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fly off as steam, boiling. But here is the crazy
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part. During the exact moment of a phase change...
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Like while the ice is in the process of melting,
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where the liquid water is in the actual process
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of boiling, the temperature stops rising entirely.
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Wait, really? So if I'm boiling water for pasta
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and I turn the burner all the way to maximum,
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the water itself doesn't actually get any hotter.
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The thermometer just stalls. What's fascinating
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here is that the thermometer absolutely stalls.
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At sea level, a pot of boiling water hits 100
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degrees Celsius, and it stays exactly there.
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Wow. No matter how much fire you put under that
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pot, The liquid water will not get hotter than
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100 degrees. But I'm actively pumping intense
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heat into it. If the temperature is a measure
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of kinetic energy and I'm adding energy, where's
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it going if it's not speeding up the molecules?
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It is going into what physicists call latent
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heat. Latent comes from the Latin word for hidden.
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Hidden heat. Think back to our tug of war. That
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extra heat energy from your stove isn't speeding
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up the particles anymore. Instead, it is doing
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the heavy lifting, the actual mechanical work
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of ripping those attractive bonds apart so the
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molecules can finally separate and fly away as
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a gas. So it's essentially paying the toll to
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let the particles leave the mosh pit. Precisely.
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You are physically stretching and breaking the
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electromagnetic bonds between the molecules.
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And that requires a massive amount of energy.
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I can imagine. Turning boiling water into steam?
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takes several times more energy than heating
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that same water all the way from freezing up
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to boiling in the first place. All that energy
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from your stove gets stored in the steam as hidden
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latent heat. Which honestly explains why steam
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causes much more severe burns than boiling water.
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I've always heard that, but the mechanics of
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it are wild. It's completely counterintuitive
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until you know the physics. Right. Like if boiling
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water hits your skin, it burns you with this
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100 degree temperature. But if steam hits your
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skin, it doesn't just burn you with temperature.
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It hits your cooler skin, condenses back into
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a liquid. And in that instant, it releases all
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of that massive, hidden, latent heat. All the
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energy it used to break its bonds. Exactly. Directly
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into your tissue. It is a phenomenal amount of
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energy transfer. Completely invisible to a thermometer.
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thermometer until it changes state. But this
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actually brings us to another assumption we need
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to break. OK, what's that? We just talked about
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water boiling at 100 degrees Celsius. But heat
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isn't the only variable in this molecular tug
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of war. There is an invisible hand. constantly
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pressing down on everything around us. Atmospheric
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pressure, the literal weight of the sky pushing
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down on us. Exactly. And it fundamentally alters
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the rules of boiling. Boiling point is not a
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fixed universal number. It's not. No. Let's look
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closely at how a bubble forms. When you heat
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a pot of water, a molecule at the bottom gets
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enough energy that it wants to become a gas.
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It tries to expand into a microscopic vapor bubble.
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Okay. But the entire weight of the Earth's atmosphere
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is pressing down on the surface of the water,
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crushing that little bubble before it can grow.
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Boiling only happens when the vapor pressure
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inside those bubbles is strong enough to push
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back against and overcome the atmospheric pressure
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sitting on top of the liquid. Here's where it
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gets really interesting. So atmospheric pressure
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is basically a heavy lid on a jack -in -the -box.
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That's a great way to put it. At sea level, the
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lid is pretty heavy so the little vapor springs
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inside the water need a lot of force, like a
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full 100 degrees of heat energy to pop the lid
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open and escape as bubbles. Right. But what happens
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if we take our pot of water up Mount Everest?
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Well, on Mount Everest, you have far less atmosphere
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above you. The air is thinner. The pressure pushing
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down is much weaker. So your jack -in -the -box
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lid is incredibly light. So they pop open easier.
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Exactly. Because of that, the water molecules
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don't need nearly as much energy. to push back
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and form bubbles. They don't have to fight as
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hard. So water boils at a noticeably lower temperature
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on a mountain than it does at sea level. Which
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completely ruins cooking. I mean, if you try
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to boil an egg or cook rice on Everest, the water
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boils away before it actually gets hot enough
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to cook the food. Yep, it just evaporates. The
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water is actively rolling and bubbling, but the
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liquid itself is physically cooler than a pot
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of simmering water in a kitchen at sea level.
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That's why mountaineers often complain that their
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tea tastes strangely weak at high altitudes.
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Really? I never thought about that. Yeah. The
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boiling water they pour over the leaves simply
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isn't hot enough to extract the flavor compounds
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efficiently. The mechanical action of boiling
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is happening, but the thermal energy just isn't
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there. And we use this exact same physics in
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reverse in the kitchen, right? The pressure cooker.
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We do. In a pressure cooker, you clamp a heavy
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lid on the pot and seal it tight. As the water
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heats up, steam tries to expand. but it's trapped.
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So it builds up inside. Because it can't escape,
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it pushes down on the liquid water. The pressure
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inside the pot builds up far beyond normal atmospheric
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pressure. Now, your jack -in -the -box lid is
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incredibly heavy. Ah, so the water molecules
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need a massive amount of energy to form bubbles
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against that crushing pressure. Exactly, which
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means the water is forced to reach a much higher
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temperature before it can finally boil. You get
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genuinely hotter liquid and hotter scheme, which
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drastically cuts the cooking time for tough meats
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or dried beans. Okay, so if we can manipulate
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the boiling point just by changing the pressure,
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what happens if we push both pressure and temperature
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to absolute unnatural extremes? Beyond heavy
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cooking pots, beyond mountains, do the rules
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just break? They don't just break, they vanish.
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Every substance has something called a critical
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point. This is a highly specific, extreme combination
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of temperature and pressure. And when you force
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a substance past its critical point, the ordinary
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distinction between a liquid and a gas... completely
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breaks down. Wait, how does that even look? Normally,
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if I have a half -empty water bottle, I can see
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the liquid water at the bottom and the air and
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water vapor at the top. There's a clear line,
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a physical surface boundary between them. Below
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the critical point, yes, that surface boundary
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is always there. But if you take a sealed, incredibly
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strong glass tube of liquid and gas and you start
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cranking up the heat and the pressure simultaneously,
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something bizarre happens. I'm listening. The
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liquid expands and becomes less dense. The gas
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gets compressed and becomes more dense. And right
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at the critical point, their densities perfectly
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match. You watch that visible boundary literally
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fade away and disappear into a fog. And what's
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left behind? The substance merges into a single
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phase called a supercritical fluid. A supercritical
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fluid? Yeah. It is a true physical hybrid. It
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acts like a liquid because it's dense enough
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to dissolve. other substances efficiently. But
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it acts like a gas because it has no surface
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tension. It can spread and diffuse deeply into
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tiny microscopic pores of solid materials in
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a way a liquid just can't. Are we talking about
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a ghost liquid? It sounds like it shouldn't exist.
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How can something behave like an expanding gas
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but clean like a liquid? If we connect this to
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the bigger picture, this ghost liquid is actually
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incredibly practical. The prime example is decaffeinating
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coffee. Wait, my morning decaf is made with extreme
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hybrid physics. It is. Industrially, they load
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unroasted coffee beans into a massive chamber
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and pump in supercritical carbon dioxide. Oh,
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what? Because it has gas -like diffusion, the
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supercritical CO2 penetrates deep inside the
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cellular structure of the raw coffee beans. But
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because it has liquid -like dissolving power,
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it acts as a solvent. It selectively grabs the
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caffeine molecules and pulls them out. And it
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doesn't ruin the coffee. No, because supercritical
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CO2 is highly selective. It grabs the caffeine
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but leaves the delicate flavor compounds behind,
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avoiding the harsh chemical solvents they used
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to use in the past. That's amazing. And the best
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part. When they're done, they just open a valve
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and release the pressure. The supercritical fluid
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instantly reverts back into ordinary CO2 gas.
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It just floats away, leaving absolutely zero
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chemical residue on your coffee beans. That is
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wild. Okay, so we manipulated pressure and temperature
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to get supercritical fluids. Let's look at another
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extreme. What if we just take temperature and
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push it as far as it can possibly go? What happens
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when a gas gets so hot that the kinetic energy
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just goes off the charts? Does it just get hotter
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forever? No, it eventually hits a breaking point.
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When you heat a gas to extreme temperatures,
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the particles are moving so incredibly fast and
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colliding with each other so violently that the
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atoms themselves literally begin to tear apart.
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They break. Yeah, the collisions are so forceful,
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they knock the negative electrons completely
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loose from their orbits around the atoms. Leaving
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the pieces floating around. Exactly. You are
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left with a churning soup. of free -floating
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negative electrons and the positively charged
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atomic cores they left behind. Those positively
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charged cores are called ions. So you basically
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have a highly energized ionized gas. And this
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is the fourth state of matter, plasma. And because
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the particles in this soup carry electrical charges,
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unlike ordinary neutral gas atoms, it behaves
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completely differently, right? Very differently.
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Because of all those free -floating charges.
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Plasma conducts electricity incredibly well,
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and it responds very strongly to magnetic fields.
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Ordinary gases don't care about magnets. Plasma
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does. So what does this all mean? Is this just
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something that happens inside a fusion reactor?
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Not at all. You actually see plasma on Earth
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all the time. Really? Where? If you look at a
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glowing neon sign, the gas inside that glass
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tube is being energized by a high voltage electrical
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current until electrons are knocked loose and
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it becomes a glowing plasma. Oh, I had no idea.
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Yeah. A lightning bolt is a brief, violent tube
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of plasma superheating the air. Even the very
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tip of a candle flame has a tiny bit of plasma
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dancing in it. But Earth is kind of the exception
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here, right? Yes, very much so. To really appreciate
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plasma, you have to look up. Out in the cosmos,
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plasma is king. The sun, and virtually every
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single star in the night sky, is an unfathomably
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massive ball of plasma. That makes sense given
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the heat. The heat and pressure is so intense
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that atoms just cannot hold on to their electrons.
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Even the vast, seemingly empty space between
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stars and galaxies is filled with a very thin,
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invisible mist of plasma. Wait, if the stars
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are plasma and the space between the stars is
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plasma, does that mean solid, liquid, and gas?
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The things we think of as the normal states of
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matter are actually the weird... rare exceptions
16:57
in the universe. It really does. Physicists joke
17:00
about it, but it's factually true. By volume,
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plasma makes up the overwhelming majority of
17:06
all ordinary matter in the observable universe.
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Solid, liquid, and gas only really exist on relatively
17:13
cool dense little rocks like Earth. That completely
17:16
flips my perspective. The default state of the
17:18
universe is a glowing, electrically charged soup.
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Okay, so extreme heat rips atoms apart into plasma.
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What about the exact opposite? What if we remove
17:27
almost all the energy? What happens when we approach
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absolute zero? Absolute zero is the coldest temperature
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theoretically possible. It's minus 273 .15 degrees
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Celsius. It is the absolute floor of physics,
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the point where kinetic energy is almost entirely
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gone. The motion just stops. Exactly. In 1995,
17:44
scientists decided to see what would happen if
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they pushed matter right up to that edge. They
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used a complex setup of lasers and powerful magnets
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to cool a small cloud of atoms down to just a
17:54
tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero.
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Wait, lasers? Lasers are intense beams of light.
17:59
They burn things. How on earth do you use a laser
18:01
to cool something down to absolute zero? It sounds
18:04
totally counterintuitive, I know. But remember...
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Cooling something down just means slowing the
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atoms down. Right, kinetic energy. Atoms are
18:12
flying around wildly. Yeah. If you tune a laser
18:14
perfectly, you can fire a stream of photons,
18:17
particles of light, directly at an atom that
18:20
is moving toward the laser. When the atom absorbs
18:22
that photon, the impact pushes back against it,
18:25
slowing its momentum just a tiny bit. Ah, like
18:28
a head -on collision. Yes. It's like throwing
18:31
millions of ping -pong balls at a rolling bowling
18:33
ball. Eventually, the bowling ball slows to a
18:36
halt. Okay, that makes sense. So they trap this
18:38
little cloud of atoms, they bombard it with lasers
18:40
from all sides until the atoms basically stop
18:42
moving. And what happened? Did it just become
18:45
the hardest, most brittle solid ever? No, it
18:48
did something far stranger. At that incredibly
18:50
low temperature, everyday classical physics completely
18:53
breaks down and the bizarre rules of quantum
18:56
mechanics take over. Things get weird. Very weird.
18:59
You see, in quantum mechanics, particles also
19:01
act like waves. Normally, those waves are incredibly
19:05
tiny. But as the atoms got colder and colder
19:08
and slower and slower, their quantum waves began
19:11
to stretch out and expand. And since they were
19:13
trapped in a tight magnetic field, their expanding
19:16
waves began to overlap. And when they overlapped,
19:18
the individual atoms actually lost their separate
19:21
identities. They stopped being a collection of
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distinct individual particles and merged into
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a single unified quantum wave. They acted as
19:29
one single giant entity. So if we take our dance
19:32
floor analogy down to absolute zero, is it like
19:35
the music completely stops, the temperature drops,
19:38
and everyone freezes so perfectly still that
19:40
their physical bodies literally blur together
19:42
and become one giant singular dancer? Yes. From
19:45
a quantum perspective, the dancers lose their
19:48
individuality entirely. You can no longer point
19:50
to an atom and say, oh, that one is atom and
19:52
that one is atom B. They're all everywhere at
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once within that trap. That's terrifying and
19:56
amazing. This state is called a Bose -Einstein
19:59
condensate. It was predicted mathematically by
20:02
Albert Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose in the
20:05
1920s, decades before we had the laser technology
20:08
to actually create it. Wow. They just knew the
20:10
math worked out. Yeah. When scientists finally
20:13
achieved it in 1995, it won the Nobel Prize because
20:17
it gave scientists a way to observe quantum behavior,
20:20
which is normally invisibly small, on a macro
20:22
scale that we can actually look at. That is incredible.
20:25
And this raises an important question, you know,
20:27
about how limited our everyday perception of
20:30
the universe actually is. Because the deeper
20:32
physicists look, the more exotic states they
20:34
find. Have you ever heard of a super solid? I've
20:37
heard the term, but I have no idea what it actually
20:40
is. If you cool certain liquids, like liquid
20:42
helium, down close to absolute zero, they undergo
20:45
quantum phase change and become a superfluid.
20:48
In a superfluid, the liquid has absolutely zero
20:50
internal friction. None. Its viscosity is zero.
20:54
How does that even work? Well, if you stir a
20:56
cup of coffee, it eventually stops spinning because
20:59
the fluid rubs against itself and the cup. If
21:01
you stir a cup of superfluid helium, it will
21:04
spin forever. No way. Seriously. In fact, because
21:07
it has zero friction, a superfluid will literally
21:10
creep up and over the walls of its container.
21:13
defying gravity just to find a lower energy state.
21:16
Wait, it just crawls out of the bowl? It crawls
21:18
right out of the bowl. And on the other end of
21:20
the extreme, beyond plasma, you have something
21:22
called quark -gluon plasma. If you smash atoms
21:24
together in a particle accelerator with enough
21:27
unbelievable heat and force, you don't just knock
21:30
the electrons loose. What happens? You literally
21:32
shatter the protons and neutrons themselves into
21:35
their fundamental building blocks, quarks and
21:36
gluons. It's a state of matter that hasn't existed
21:40
naturally since the first fractions of a second
21:42
after the Big Bang. It completely humbles you.
21:45
I mean, our whole lives are built around solid,
21:47
liquid and gas, the ice cube, the water, the
21:49
steam. But they are just a tiny, fragile sliver
21:53
of reality dictated by the very specific, very
21:57
moderate temperature and pressure we happen to
21:59
live in on the surface of the Earth. They are
22:01
definitely the exception, not the rule. So the
22:04
next time you are sitting on the patio and you
22:05
watch that ice cube melt in your glass, I hope
22:08
you look at it with a newfound respect. It's
22:11
not just water warming up. Not at all. It is
22:14
a quiet, microscopic demonstration of latent
22:17
heat. It's the eternal tug of war between kinetic
22:21
energy and attractive bonds. It is the exact
22:24
same foundational physics that dictates how a
22:26
pressure cooker traps steam, why neon signs glow,
22:30
what powers the blazing heart of the sun, and
22:32
what happens when atoms blur together into a
22:34
single quantum dancer in the coldest high -tech
22:37
laboratories on Earth. And I'll leave you with
22:39
this one final thought to ponder. All right,
22:42
what is it? We only discover things like supercritical
22:44
fluids and boson sine condensates because human
22:47
beings invented incredibly complex machines to
22:50
force matter into artificial extremes of temperature
22:53
and pressure. But the universe has natural extremes
22:55
we can barely fathom. What completely unknown,
22:58
unimaginable states of matter might currently
23:01
exist naturally inside the crushing gravity of
23:04
a black hole or deep within the unimaginably
23:07
dense core of a neutron star just waiting for
23:10
us to figure out they are there. Man, it makes
23:12
the universe feel a lot bigger and a lot stranger.
23:15
Thank you so much for joining us on this deep
23:17
dive. We'll catch you next time.