• Question: If you melt plasma while it is boiling, what do you get?

    Asked by Ethan to Tom on 22 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Tom Nicholas

      Tom Nicholas answered on 22 Jun 2017:


      Plasma is like a 4th state of matter, so you have solid, liquid, gas, then plasma. Boiling is the process of changing from a liquid to a gas, so something that is a plasma already melted and then boiled a long time ago! Changing from a gas to a plasma is called ionization, and happens when the atoms in the gas smash into each other hard enough to knock electrons off the atoms, leaving charged ions behind.

Comments