• Question: What exactly is a plasma?

    Asked by Bookworm_Fangirl to Scott, Vicky, Jim, Gaia, Adrian on 8 Mar 2016. This question was also asked by emerald_tech.
    • Photo: Scott Lawrie

      Scott Lawrie answered on 8 Mar 2016:

      Hey bookworm thanks for the question!

      We often say that plasma is the ‘fourth state of matter’. You know that when you heat a solid up it melts into a liquid, and when you heat a liquid up it evaporates into a gas? Well when you heat a gas up it turns into a plasma!

      What that means is that the electrons themselves get ripped off the atoms in the gas, so there are lots of positive and negative charged particles whizzing about all over the place.

      Plasma is actually the most common ‘stuff’ in the universe! It’s what a star is made of and also the (not quite empty) space between stars is full of plasma. On earth, we know plasma in the form of lightning bolts, welding torches and the strip-light tubes in the ceiling. Plasma’s very beautiful and magical: the one I work with is bright pink! There’s a picture of it on my profile 🙂

    • Photo: Adrian Buzatu

      Adrian Buzatu answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      A plasma is the fourth state of matter besides solid, liquid, gas. Fire is one example. The Sun is another. It’s when the molecule of a gas are split into positive electrons and negative ions.

      There is also a fifth state of matter called quark-gluon plasma. It existed shortly after the Big Bang, when the quarks and gluons were mixed together in some sort of a soup. Only later on they combined to create either protons and neutrons, each made of three quarks.

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