In addition to the three standard states of matter — solid, liquid, and gas — there’s a higher-energy state of an ionized plasma, arising wherever atoms and molecules have too few electrons to be electrically neutral.

Liquids have the following characteristics:

• No definite shape (takes the shape of its container).
• Has definite volume.
• Particles are free to move over each other, but are still attracted to each other.

Liquids boil at the temperature at which the vapor pressure is equal to the pressure on the liquid from its surroundings. Raising the pressure on a gas therefore effectively increases the boiling point of the liquid.

The Sun is our nearest star. It is, as all stars are, a hot ball of gas made up mostly of Hydrogen. The Sun is so hot that most of the gas is actually plasma, the fourth state of matter. The first state is a solid and it is the coldest state of matter.

Matter can be classified into several categories. Two broad categories are mixtures and pure substances. A pure substance has a constant composition. All specimens of a pure substance have exactly the same makeup and properties.

The properties of matter include any traits that can be measured, such as an object’s density, color, mass, volume, length, malleability, melting point, hardness, odor, temperature, and more.

An ice cube is made of water particles, but it is a solid because its particles are packed closely together, resulting in its hard, fixed state.

60% of an adult’s body is made of water, which means that the human body would be at least 60% liquid. Another 15% of of the body is made of bone, which is mostly solid. The other 25% would be mostly made of a combination of different substances in different states of matter.

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