Eli5: What are the other states of matter aside from solid, liquid and gas and why are they not being taught in schools?
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First of all, you should have been taught about plasma.
If you didn’t learn about plasma, get a refund on your diploma.
Beyond that, though….
There are a few dozen, at least.
It’s hard to give an exact number or an exact list because “state of matter” is not precisely defined, and it’s sometimes hard to give a hard line of demarcation between them.
Some of them are really exotic, and don’t really come up except under very strange (or even theoretical, never seen before) situations.
You can’t expect to learn about those in school because you would first have to learn about the situations under which they (theoretically) arise, which could require several years of advanced physics.
Some of them are really mundane, like “glass”.
The thing about glass is that, while glass is all around us and we can understand it fairly well, the precise properties that cause us to (often) consider it distinct from other states of matter are not terribly relevant to what else you’re learning about.
When you learn about states of matter in school, you’re usually learning really basic and easily observed differences between them (liquids fit the shape of their container, and solids don’t…kind of) and glass doesn’t have in-your-face characteristics like that.
You *could* teach glass in a high school science class (and I’m sure there are some science teachers who do or have), but you’d have to get into crystalline structures and I think you’d have to be teaching to a class of students who are extraordinarily interested in materials.
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