Basically the title. I know water can be solid, liquid, and gas, but does that apply to everything or just water?
In: Chemistry
Nobody has mentioned ‘superfluids’ which are like liquids that flow without friction. This is another state of matter and CO2 exists in this state in a gas cylinder.
It’s sort of a liquid and sort of a gas.
Fun fact…a metal in the gaseous state is a fume. Most of the time when the word fume is used, they should use glasses or vapors.
As people have said, some molecules (groups of atoms stuck together) will break apart from heat before melting or boiling
But for pure elements (all the atoms of the periodic table), yes! All the metals have boiling points not just melting points. If you heat them past melting they will boil and become gases exactly like how water does. Even things like carbon have a boiling point, it’s just very hot.
You can look up boiling point tables if you’re curious. Some metals need 1000s of degrees, others surprisingly little. The metals that are liquid at ~room temp (gallium and mercury have low melting point) also have low boiling points! As a result mercury liquid is always giving off vapour which is why its such a health hazard. The liquid on your skin is fine, breathing it isn’t.
There’s some substances with really big molecules, like paper and vulcanized rubber, and I think some with really fragile molecules like nitrogen triiodide, that won’t melt no matter what you do. That’s because when you melt something, it melting means all the molecules are shaking around so much that they can slide freely past each other without getting stuck or tangled. Big molecules like you find in paper are so hard to untangle to make them slide freely that they’ll tear themselves apart first, and really fragile molecules like nitrogen triiodide will tear themselves apart if you so much as look at them funny. The pieces of torn apart molecules might leave as a gas or stay around as a liquid, depending on the temperature and pressure around them, but they’re not the original substance, so it’s impossible to make melted paper that will harden back into paper as it cools.
Most substances can, and metal vapours are absolutely a thing that exists. However, some substances chemically change into other substances before they’re able to melt or vapourise.
A typical example is wood, which is a complex network of plant cell structures mostly composed of starches. If heated in an oxygen-free environment, it will [pyrolise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis), splitting into a mixture of multiple substances like water, trace minerals and elemental carbon. Those substances can all be made into gases with more heating, but they’re no longer wood.
The answer is almost entirely “yes”.
Strictly speaking, heating and cooling alone won’t do it – you may also have to change the pressure of the substance. Carbon dioxide, for example, goes straight from solid to gas at normal Earth pressures but does have a liquid state at higher pressures. (Water would show the same behavior at lower pressures, going right from ice to vapor without a liquid state. It does this on Mars, for example, which is why Mars has no liquid water on its surface despite (a) having tons of ice and (b) sometimes going well above freezing temp.)
There are also chemicals that, under normal circumstances, will break down or react long before they reach a different state of matter (for example, wood will burn before it melts). But in principle, every substance has a [triple point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_point) where the solid, gas, and liquid phases all meet and you can go through any of the three phases by changing temperature or pressure just a tiny bit.
Very strictly speaking, I believe helium-4 is speculated, but not known, to have a solid form at high pressures. But that’s a rare exception in a material that interacts in extremely unusual ways, at temperatures low enough for quantum-mechanical effects to be important (at which point “liquid” stops really being a good descriptor either, as it doesn’t behave like a typical liquid).
Im sure this has also been mentioned and im just not reading it but there is actually a 5th material state as well FYI! Its called the Bose Einstein Condensate and it is the point at which an object becomes so solid/cold that even the tiny molecular vibrations that all solids have are completely arrested and 100% stop moving
1. Yes, others have explained.
2. There are WAY more than 3 states of matter. Classically there are 4, solid, liquid, gas and plasma. I wont go into the others because there are a lot and I only understand a few but here’s the list: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_matter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_matter)
it applies to lots of things, but for some things there may need to be certain conditions in order for it to happen. Like needing a vacuum
It’s called the triple point
[**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_point**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_point)
the triple point of nitrogen demonstrated
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz_tj-tQoBE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz_tj-tQoBE)
I think the only exception is Helium.
Solids, liquids and gases are really about how well atoms stick together. Solids are like Velcro – once it’s stuck it’s very rigid. Liquids are like a bunch of those magnet balls – they are definitely connected but can be moved quite easily. Gases don’t even stick to one another in any meaningful way.
Every single kind of bond gets weaker when you heat things up. Heat is just a fancy form of kinetic energy (movement). The more you move, the harder it is to grab you.
That’s why *anything* becomes a gas at high enough temperatures. Some things don’t behave like that though.
Dry ice goes straight from solid to gas through a process called sublimation. No liquid phase is possible.
And Helium is even more special. See, these bonds that determine whether things are solid, liquid or gas are not all created equal. From strongest to weakest we have Ionic, Metallic, Covalent, and Van der waals.
Ionic is where two (or more) atoms give some of their negative electrons to another atom. This means that the donor is now positively charged and the recipient is negatively charged. Thus, they are attracted to each other. A good example is salt.
Covalent is similar, but it’s more like borrowing electrons. Water (H2O)is a great example. The electrons spend most of their time at the O and rarely visit the Hs. This means that the O js “partially negative” and the Hs are “partially positive”, so water can attract itself a good deal. Covalent bonds sound weaker and normally are, but materials like Kevlar use them because if some cool quirks.
Metallic bonds are super complicated and metallurgists are still learning a lot about them. They’re not super important here though.
That just leaves the Van der waals force. Essentially, electrons orbit around the nucleus – the core – of an atom. But they’re not everywhere at once. Wherever they ARE is negatively charged, and wherever they AREN’T is positively charged in comparison. It’s a teeny, tiny minuscule force of attraction though. Barely worth thinking about…
UNLESS you’re an atom like Helium. An element completely incapable of metallic, covalent or Ionic bonds. And also has the least van der waals force of all atoms on account of being so small.
Helium is so unattractive to itself, that even approaching absolutel zero – the coldest things can be – it still won’t become a solid.
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