Solid, liquid, gas and … plasma? - Michael Murillo
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/solid-liquid-gas-and-plasma-michael-murillo Have you ever seen static electricity cause a spark of light? What is that ...
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Have you ever seen static electricity cause a spark of light? What is that spark? What about lightning, the Northern Lights, or the tail of a comet? All of those things, and many others, in fact 99.9% of the universe, are made of plasma. Plasma is a state of matter drastically different from the more familiar forms. Take ice, for example. Ice, a solid, melts to become water, a liquid, which, when heated, vaporizes into steam, a gas. Continued heating of the steam at a high enough temperature causes the water molecules in it to separate into freely roaming hydrogen and oxygen atoms. With a little more heat, the ionization process occurs and the negatively charged electrons escape the atoms, leaving behind positively charged ions. This mixture of freely roaming negative a...
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Have you ever seen static electricity cause a spark of light? What is that spark? What about lightning, the Northern Lights, or the tail of a comet? All of those things, and many others, in fact 99.9% of the universe, are made of plasma. Plasma is a state of matter drastically different from the more familiar forms. Take ice, for example. Ice, a solid, melts to become water, a liquid, which, when heated, vaporizes into steam, a gas. Continued heating of the steam at a high enough temperature causes the water molecules in it to separate into freely roaming hydrogen and oxygen atoms. With a little more heat, the ionization process occurs and the negatively charged electrons escape the atoms, leaving behind positively charged ions. This mixture of freely roaming negative a...
