> On Aug 5, 2017, at 8:36 AM, John F Sowa <[email protected]> wrote: > > Actually, there are many "strange states" of matter, for which that > three-way distinction is extremely oversimplified.
I’d just add to your great comments that really these are just folk science distinctions. They happen to work most of the time for the chemistry but break down in many cases. That is we use them primarily is for historic reasons. You list some great examples where they break down. I suspect most physicists/chemists would focus on a phase change diagram and see those are more useful states. That in turn becomes quite crucial since the path one takes through temperature/pressure can lead to very different states. A great practical way to see this is with a common food like chocolate. Chocolate that you buy is tempered and in a particular thermodynamic state. When you melt it, in say a hot car, that state changes even when it cools back down. It now has very different properties - usually noticed by the oils and solids in the chocolate separating leading to yellow or whitish blotches. It’ll also have different texture and taste. If you were to put it back in the proper thermodynamic state (called tempering in culinary terms) then it’ll be just as if you’d bought it. So one needn’t look to just very unusual examples outside of common experience such as plasmas (although of course a fire is an example of a plasma). The folk physics of three states breaks down in many common types of phenomena. However of course talking about three states of matter is extremely useful pedagogically.
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