Saturday, May 2, 2015

Is there a state beyond gas?



If you could boil water in a sealed container until it became vapor and you still kept applying heat to it would something happen? Maybe gas to super-gas? This has been on my mind for a long time I really hope someone can help out.



Answer



Plasma is described as the 4th state of matter, which is what you get if you give so much temperature that the molecules begin to break up and ionize into positively and negatively charged fragments.


Another Claim on the title '4th State of matter' is a 'supercritical fluid'. Sometimes people draw phase diagrams with it to show this '4th state of matter'. (Strictly speaking Supercritical fluids may be a different phase from liquid, solid and gas and more '4th phase of matter' than '4th state of matter' as pointed out in the good comment from Jim. - the state of a supercritical fluid is gas - whether supercritical fluid is a phase or state maybe something that is up for debate at the moment.)


phase diagram of carbon dioxide showing supercritical phase (from wikipedia) phase diagram of carbon dioxide showing supercritical phase (from wikipedia)


As can be see from the diagram the supercritical state exists above the critical temperature and pressure.


Supercritical fluids have many interesting properties. For example supercritical water dissolves organic molecules (such as organic solvents), which would not normally dissolve in water. It is also very acid and very alkaline at the same time because there is a high concentration in the liquid of both H$^+$ and OH$^-$ ions.


Supercritical carbon dioxide is used to remove caffeine from coffee beans.


Finally to go back to your question, if you took water and heated it in a sealed container it would 'go supercritical' if it did not break the container first - please don't do this at home, because if the container breaks then you would have alot of very hot dangerous steam --- people who research this for science tend to work with very small volumes for safety.


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