Can all substances be in all 3 states of matter? If you heat up metal, it will melt, but is there a point where you heat it enough that it will become a gas? Same goes for every substance on earth

Question

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

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

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.