Apparently it is some sort of heated gas, that is what I understand. Why not just call it gas then? Does it matter if it’s heated or not, what is the difference? Is there any difference to gas in the bonds of the particles?
In: Chemistry
Plasma is an electrically conductive gas in which the electrons have become dissociated from their nuclei. In other words, whether as a result of heating or some other force, the atoms in the gas are stripped of electrons and you get a soup of bare protons, neutrons, and electrons. This substance behaves substantially differently from a typical atomic gas, to the point of being classified as a different form of matter.
When you say “solid” or “liquid” or “gas” what you’re really saying is
> A lot of materials will show the same sorts of behaviors. So I can lump them all together and use those behaviors to predict their behaviors.
For example, as “gas” will expand to fill its container. A “solid” will hold its shape.
You can even extend this to more detailed predictions. So the “ideal gas law” gives a formula to relate the pressure, volume, and quantity of a gas.
A few relevant properties for gasses. They generally don’t strongly respond to electromagnetic fields. Another is that each gas atom/molecule can only effect things by bouncing off them (So if you want to model a gas at the atomic level you only need to worry about each atom and its nearest neighbors).
In a plasma you heat things up enough that you separate some/all of the electrons from their atoms. Now you have charged particles flying around. This changes all sorts of behaviors for your material. Plasmas conduct electricity. If you expose a plasma to a EM field it will generate a strong response. If those charged particles change direction for some reason they will produce their own little EM field. So now if two charge particles ‘bounce’ off each other it can have an effect on all the other charged particles in the plasma.
So you have a “plasma” because you start to have a bunch of behaviors that you were not worried about under “gas”, and you also are missing some behaviors you’d normally associate with “gas”.
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