I'm sure you've noticed that different materials have different properties. For example, if you put a piece of wood in water, it will float while metal sinks. On the other hand, if you're trying to figure out how much weight your old truck can handle on its suspension system, then it's important to know whether it's made of steel or aluminum. There are many reasons why substances take on different physical forms with different properties. In this article we'll discuss one of these reasons: state of matter.
State of matter refers to the physical state of a substance based on its temperature and pressure. When you see a substance, you can generally determine what state it's in by looking at it and feeling it.
The three states are gas (the particles are far apart), liquid (the particles are close together), and solid (the particles are very close together).
The three states of matter are gas, liquid, and solid.
Gas is the state of matter with the least amount of energy. Examples include steam and air. Liquids have more energy than gases but less than solids do. Examples include water and mercury (a liquid metal). Solids have the most energy out of all three states as they’re held together by a crystalline structure that gives them shape so they don't flow like liquids do or disappear into thin air like gases do when they're heated up enough to change from one state to another
As you may have already guessed, particles in gases are much farther apart than they are in liquids or solids. This is because the molecules of gases are not as tightly bound together. Whether you're talking about air or helium balloons, gases simply aren't as dense as their solid and liquid counterparts.
Since particles in a gas are farther apart than they are in either a solid or liquid, they have more freedom to move around. More importantly, there is nothing holding them together. This means that each particle has the ability to move independently of one another and spread out over a larger area than particles in either solids or liquids. In other words, gases are less dense than liquids or solids because there is simply more room for them to spread out without being crowded by neighboring molecules (or atoms).
In liquids, the particles are closer together than they are in gases, but they are still free to move around one another. Gases have a lower density than liquids because their molecules have more space between them; this means that gas molecules don't interact with each other as much as liquid molecules do. In solids, the particles are packed tightly together and cannot move at all.
In solids, the particles are usually close together and held tightly. The particles are not free to move around one another and they are held together by chemical bonds. There is also an attractive force between the particles called intermolecular forces which can be ionic or covalent in nature.
Materials are entire things. They have mass and volume, but they can also change their shape and size. And the properties of materials change with their states.
For example, solids have different properties than liquids or gases do. Solids offer resistance to compression (you can push on them), melting occurs at a certain temperature and boiling occurs at a different temperature, but other than that they don't really change much when you apply heat. Liquids on the other hand don't offer much resistance to compression, they flow freely instead of resisting being pushed around (even though there's still some friction in liquids). In addition to flowing readily through tubes, liquids have another very distinct property: viscosity!
Viscosity refers to how "thick" something is -- thicker fluids will take longer for particles within those fluids to move around compared to thinner ones (particles in dense substances like honey stick together better). This is why honey doesn't slide off your toast easily -- there's enough friction between those sticky little particles so as not allow any movement at all until enough force has been applied by whatever it's sitting on top of (like your tongue!).
The state of matter is an important thing to know if you are working with a material. Knowing what state the substance is in will help you understand how it will react with different substances, and thus its properties. For example, water at room temperature has many different properties than does ice at room temperature. This can have a drastic effect on how the substance behaves when working with it.
So next time you are working with a material, make sure to pay attention to its state! If it’s solid, then this means that it is held together tightly. If it’s liquid, then the particles are closer together than in gases but still have some freedom of movement around one another. And finally if something is a gas, then there will be many molecules spread out far apart from each other