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SYMMETRY OF MATTER
Lesson 2 - Page 1

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LESSON 2.  What is Matter? (Lab)

Matter comes in all shapes and sizes and includes everything that has mass. This would include elements and compounds, the ingredients that make up “stuff.” Matter can be small or large and takes only a few forms on Earth including solid, liquid, and gas.  A fourth state of matter called plasma, which is an ionized state, is abundant in space. A fifth state of matter that was confirmed in the 1990's is called the Bose-Einstein Condensate, describes how atoms react in a super cooled state.  

In the solid state the atoms and molecules vibrate in a stable position.  If the rate of the atoms and molecules increase this solid will become a liquid, or it will take the shape of its container.  If more energy is put into the material the molecules will vibrate at even greater rates, this is the gaseous state.     If the molecules separate into atoms and the atoms themselves are shaken apart, making a gas of free electrons and bare nuclei this called plasma.  Although plasma is not common on Earth, it is a very normal state of matter in the universe.  The Sun and other stars are in the plasma state.

Bose-Einstein Condensate was first predicted by Albert Einstein using work done by Satyendra Bose in 1925.  It was not until 1995 when Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman (University of Colorado) actually produced this state in the laboratory.  Condensates are extremely low temperature fluids with different properties sometimes referred to as “superatomic” state.