In grade school, we’re all taught that there are three states of matter: solids, liquids, and gases. But I’ve seen several other states of matter being added to the trio, such as plasmas, Bose-Einstein condensates, supersolids, and the like. I’ve seen competing science news articles say that there are five, seven, and even as many as fifteen.
How many are there really?
In: 3
The answer is “as many as necessary.” Each state of matter has “something” different from the others. For example, plasma is a gas composed of ions (atoms with missing or extra electrons) instead of neutral atoms. The initial 3 (solid, liquid, gas) were based on differences in pressure and temperature, but as physics advanced, other properties of matter were included in the list.
So considering every little property that’s measurable and can be “different”, there can be a lot of states of matter.
[This wiki article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_of_matter) has a list of states of matter. Not sure if it’s “all of them.”
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