What are states of matter?

Have you ever wondered what makes an ice cube, a glass of water, and steam from a kettle so completely different? Well, get ready to have your mind blown, because they are actually made of the exact same stuff! Join Mira and Finn as they zoom in super close to explore the amazing, invisible world of the states of matter! Did you know that a single tiny raindrop holds over one point six seven sextillion microscopic pieces called molecules? That is way more pieces than there are stars in our entire galaxy! We'll discover how heating things up makes these tiny pieces jiggle, zigzag, and bounce off the walls at over a thousand miles an hour! You'll hear the crazy true story of a scientist who discovered dancing pollen, learn about the freezing extremes of Absolute Zero, and meet a superhero material called Hafnium carbide that can survive temperatures almost as hot as the Sun! Plus, find out why fluffy white clouds aren't actually made of gas, but are floating oceans of liquid! It is a zooming, mind-melting adventure you won't want to miss!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Welcome to Science Is Not Boring by kidopoly.com. I'm Mira! And I'm Finn! Before we jump in today, we have a huge shout out to Oliver in Indianapolis.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Yeah! Oliver is an awesome returning listener who asked all about the states of matter. Brilliant pick, Oliver. This one is for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Okay Finn, to kick things off, picture a single drop of water. Just one tiny raindrop on your fingertip. How many microscopic pieces or molecules do you think are packed inside it?

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

A thousand? Maybe a million? Not even close. One single drop of water contains about 1.67 sextillion molecules.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Sextilion? Wait, how many zeros is that?

SPEAKER_00 1:37

That is a one followed by 21 zeros. If you counted one molecule every single second, non-stop, it would take you tens of trillions of years just to count the pieces in one single raindrop.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Tens of trillions of years for one drop? That is impossible to even imagine. So there are more pieces in a drop of water than there are stars in our galaxies.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Exactly! And today we are talking about what those tiny pieces are doing. We're diving into solids, liquids, and gases, and how stuff changes from one to another. Yes! The states of matter! Let's get into it! So, everything in the universe, from the tablet in your hands to the air you breathe, is made of these tiny pieces called molecules.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

And they behave differently depending on if they are a solid, a liquid, or a gas.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Spot on, let's look at an ice cube. Ice is a solid. In a solid, those sextillions of tiny pieces are packed together incredibly tightly. They hold their shape. So they don't move at all?

SPEAKER_01 2:44

They're just frozen?

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Actually, they do move. They jiggle right in place, almost like they are shivering, but they are locked together, which is why an ice cube stays a hard cube. But what happens when you hold an ice cube? Why does it melt into water? When you touch an ice cube, it feels freezing cold because it's stealing heat from your warm hand. Heating something up adds energy to the molecules. It makes the pieces jiggle faster and faster.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Oh, so it steals my body heat. And the pieces jiggle until they break loose.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Exactly! When ice hits exactly zero degrees Celsius, the pieces vibrate so hard they break their tight bonds. They start sliding around each other. Now it's a liquid and it takes the shape of whatever cup you pour it into.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

The pieces just flow. But what if you put that water on the stove and turn the heat all the way up?

SPEAKER_00 3:41

At 100 degrees Celsius, the water boils. The heat makes the particles jiggle so violently that they completely bounce away from each other. It turns into steam, which is a gas. Whoa, so they zoom up into the air. They zoom around at incredible speeds. In a gas, the particles fly in all directions, bouncing off the walls and filling the whole room. In boiling steam, water molecules are rocketing around at over 1,100 miles per hour.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Over a thousand miles an hour? That is faster than a fighter jet. Imagine a billion tiny fighter jets bouncing off the walls of your kitchen when you make tea.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

But Finn, here's a massive mystery. If these molecules are so unbelievably tiny that we can't even see a sextillion of them in a single drop of water, how do we know they are actually moving?

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Oh right. We can't see them zooming at a thousand miles an hour. So how did scientists figure it out?

SPEAKER_00 4:43

It all started back in the year 1827 with a Scottish botanist named Robert Brown. A botanist? Isn't that someone who studies plants? Exactly. Robert Brown was staring through a heavy brass microscope in his laboratory. He carefully placed pollen grains from a pink flower called Clarkia polcella onto a glass slide with a tiny drop of water.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Okay, I'm picturing a scientist in the 1800s, peering into a microscope. What did he see?

SPEAKER_00 5:15

He looked through his lens and saw something completely impossible. The pollen was dancing. Dancing?

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Like moving on its own?

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Yes, they were jiggling, zigzagging, and jumping all around in the water. Robert Brown was completely confused.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Did he think the pollen was alive? Like little swimming bugs?

SPEAKER_00 5:39

He totally did at first. To test his theory, he took dust from rocks and even pollen from plants that had been dead for a hundred years and put them in the water.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

And let me guess, they danced too.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

They sure did. Every tiny thing he put in the water jiggled in the exact same zigzag pattern. He proved it wasn't alive, but he had no idea what was pushing the pollen around.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Wait, I know! It was the water molecules bumping into them.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Bingo! But it took nearly 80 years for someone to prove it with math. Before 1905, some scientists didn't even believe molecules were real. But a famous scientist named Albert Einstein finally cracked the code. Einstein? The guy with the crazy hair. That's him. Einstein proved that the invisible water molecules were zooming around and crashing into the much larger pollen grains, like invisible bumper cars.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

So the water was basically a giant mosh pit of molecules, and the pollen was just getting bounced around in the crowd. That is so cool.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Now that we know temperature is just how fast molecules are jiggling, what happens if we take things to the absolute extreme?

SPEAKER_01 6:55

Ooh, I love extremes. How cold can we get? Do the molecules ever completely stop moving? They do.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Scientists call this point absolute zero. It happens at an unbelievably freezing, minus 273.15 degrees Celsius.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

That's way colder than Antarctica.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

It's the coldest possible temperature in the entire universe. At absolute zero, the molecules lose almost all their energy. The jiggling basically stops completely.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Okay, so that's the ultimate freeze. But what about the ultimate melt? What is the absolute hardest thing to melt into a liquid?

SPEAKER_00 7:43

That title belongs to a supermaterial created in laboratories called hafnium carbide.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Hafnium carbide? That sounds like something from a superhero movie.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

It really is a super solid. Remember how ice melts at a mild zero degrees Celsius?

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Yep, it turns to liquid water, easy peasy.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Well, hafnium carbide stays solid through a bonfire, a volcano, and even a blowtorch. Scientists have to blast it with intense lasers just to test it. It doesn't melt until it reaches a mind melting, 3,958 degrees Celsius.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Are you serious? It just laughed at the lasers. Wait, how hot is 4,000 degrees compared to, like, the sun?

SPEAKER_00 8:33

The surface of the sun is about 5,500 degrees. So hafnium carbide can survive almost to the temperature of a star without turning into a liquid.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

That is ridiculous! The pieces must be packed so tightly that even crazy heat can't shake them loose.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Exactly. It takes a massive amount of thermal energy to make those specific particles break apart and slide around. That's why scientists want to use it to build spaceships that have to endure insane heat. And that's why understanding solids, liquids, and gases is so important. This melting, freezing, and boiling is happening all around us, every single day.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

You mean like when I melt butter on my toast? The butter particles get hot and start sliding around.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Exactly. Or look at the entire water cycle of our planet. The sun heats up the liquid ocean, the water molecules jiggle faster, turn into invisible gas, and float up high into the sky.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Oh, and when they get super high up where the air is cold, they slow down and turn back into liquid.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Right, that's exactly what a cloud is. People often think clouds are made of gas, but they are actually trillions of tiny liquid water droplets suspended in the air. Wait, clouds are liquid, not gas? Yep. When water is a gas, it's called water vapour, and it is completely invisible. The moment you can actually see a cloud in the sky, or the steam puffing from a kettle, the gas has already cooled down enough to turn back into tiny liquid droplets.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Whoa! So it's basically a floating ocean up there. And when those liquid drops get too heavy, they fall down as rain. You got it.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

And here's one more cool thing. When you breathe out on a freezing winter day and see a little white cloud in front of your face, you are doing the exact same thing. Wait, really? I'm making a liquid cloud. Yes. Your warm breath is full of invisible water vapour. It hits the freezing winter air, the water particles lose energy, slow their jiggling, and form a mini liquid cloud right in front of you.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

I am literally controlling the states of matter with my face. I'm a walking weather system. That is the coolest thing ever.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Alright, Finn, it's time for the quiz. Let's see how well you remember the states of matter.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Okay, I'm ready. Bring on the heat or the cold.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

First question. What was the name of the Scottish botanist who saw pollen dancing in water? Next one. What year did he make this incredible microscopic discovery? Question three. Approximately how many molecules are in a single drop of water? Here's number four. What specific temperature in Celsius is absolute zero? Last question. What is the name of the super tough material that doesn't melt until nearly four thousand degrees Celsius? Great job! Let's see how you did. The first answer is Robert Brown. For question two, he made his discovery in the year 1827. Number three, the answer is 1.67 sextillion molecules. Question four, absolute zero is minus two hundred seventy three point one five degrees Celsius. And the final answer is hafnium carbide.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Yes, I got it. Though I definitely wouldn't want to touch hafnium carbide when it's hot.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Definitely not. But it is just so amazing that the exact same stuff can be a frozen solid, a flowing liquid, or a zooming gas, just by changing how fast its tiny pieces jiggle.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Science is seriously wild. Everything around us is secretly moving.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

If you had fun jiggling through the states of matter with us, please leave a five-star review.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Yeah! It takes massive heat to melt hafnium carbide, but it only takes one second to scroll down and tap those five stars.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

It really helps other kids find the show. Oh, and don't forget to check out our site kidopoly.com. We've got tons of fun learning games and activities there.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Head over to our site kidopoly.com for more cool stuff to explore. It's awesome!

SPEAKER_00 13:33

And if you want a shout out on the show like Oliver or just want to say hi, email us at hello at kidopoly.com.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

See you next time on Science is not boring.