You have probably been familiar with the states of matter for many years. Broadly speaking there are five known states of matter viz – the solid state, the liquid state, the gaseous state, the plasma, and the Bose-Einstein condensate. However, in the face of increasing scientific knowledge, this number is highly likely to change.
A state of a physical or a chemical system is determined by the values of certain measurable quantities that determine the physical properties of this system. For instance, if the constituents of the system are far away and capable of random motion, the system can be considered to be in a fluidic state.
If the constituents are very tightly bound, the system can be considered to be in a solid state. But there is more to it. In this chapter, we will study a few of these states in detail and try to form working models of their behaviour.