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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The easy answer is “because most people don’t need to know about them”.
Plasma – often called the fourth state of matter – is becoming relevant as more and more technology uses “cold” plasma for electronic displays; and as such is sometimes covered in science classes starting in middle school or high school.
Some people might deal with supercritical fluids – we use supercritical CO2 for dry cleaning, as well as some food production. However, it’s much less likely; and most people probably won’t ever have a reason to understand how and why they work.
And everything else is even less likely to be practical. Unless you’re dealing with scientifically cold things (as in, temperatures measured in single or double digit Kelvins), you probably will never have reason to know about either a Bose-Einstein condensate or a superfluid (which is different than supercritical fluid). AND, both of these are harder to understand too – I can kinda explain superfluids; but I can’t explain Bose-Einstein condensates.
And everything else gets harder to understand and less likely to be useful to the average person. There’s no way the time and effort required to cover them is worth the benefit of students being able to pass a test on them, let alone the time required to actually teach understanding.
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