Basically the title. I know water can be solid, liquid, and gas, but does that apply to everything or just water?
In: Chemistry
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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