• Question: How do you make an element turn into a plasma, and is plasma a proper state, because everyone says that there are only three states, solid, liquid and gas

    Asked by tomnbertie to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 29 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Andrew Thomas

      Andrew Thomas answered on 29 Jun 2012:


      To get a material, element or compound, into a plasma first you have to make it into a gas and ten you have to ionise it. A plasma is essentially an excited mess of atoms, electrons and light. It does count as a state because if you add energy to a solid it will melt to form a liquid, add more and the liquid boils to form a gas and more energy will eventually give you a plasma. In fact there are some other states in physics that don’t occur under normal conditions on earth, they are called Bose-Einstein condensate, neutron star and quark gluon plasma. The quark gluon plasma is made up of the particles which make up protons and neutrons in atoms.

    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 29 Jun 2012:


      Plasma is definately a proper state, and it’s a huge problem for ships propellers!!

      A ships propeller causes really fast changes in pressure within the water, and little bubbles can form and immediately collapse due to these spots of pressure. Turns out these little bubble get pretty hot, up to 15000 kelvin and have cores of plasma! This phenomena is called cavitation. If the bubbles implode near the surface of the propellers metal it eats away at it causeing corrosive damage. You can trace the paths of the bubbles in some of the pictures of cavitation damage.

      Pistol shrimp (yep, like lobsters) can create cavitation bubbles in their claws, they use them to kill fish! It’s like they’ve got built in ray guns or something!

      So yes, plasma is real, and you can make plasma by spinning a propeller in water, or by being a pistol shrimp with awesome claws!

      Heres a video with a very enthusiastic guy and some more info::

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 29 Jun 2012:


      Plasma is “a state of matter similar to gas in which a certain portion of the particles are ionized. Heating a gas may ionize its molecules or atoms (reduce or increase the number of electrons in them), thus turning it into a plasma, which contains charged particles: positive ions and negative electrons or ions.[1] Ionization can be induced by other means, such as strong electromagnetic field applied with a laser or microwave generator, and is accompanied by the dissociation of molecular bonds, if present.”

      Plasmas are actually by far the most common phase of matter in the universe, both by mass and by volume! All the stars are made of plasma, and even the space between the stars is filled with a plasma, albeit a very sparse one.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics)

    • Photo: Ashley Cadby

      Ashley Cadby answered on 30 Jun 2012:


      Andrew’s answer is really good

    • Photo: Gemma Staite

      Gemma Staite answered on 1 Jul 2012:


      I agree, plasma is definitely a state. I can’t really add anything of use to the answers given, but it is a really interesting topic.

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