← 🧪 Chemistry · usually met in Std 5-9
Solid, liquid and gas are the same particles in different arrangements — plus plasma, which is what most of the visible universe is actually made of.
In a solid the particles are packed and held in place; they vibrate but cannot travel, so a solid keeps its shape. In a liquid they still touch but can slide past one another, so a liquid takes the shape of its container while keeping its volume. In a gas they are far apart and moving fast, so a gas fills whatever it is in.
Heating adds energy to the particles until they break free of the arrangement they were in — melting, then boiling. Cooling does the reverse. Nothing new is created or destroyed in any of it, which is why it is a physical change and not a chemical one: the water in steam, water and ice is the same substance throughout. A fourth state, plasma, forms when gas is heated so fiercely that electrons are torn from atoms. Stars are plasma, and so is the inside of a lightning bolt.
Want to see it moving? Search YouTube for “States of matter” ↗ — we send you to the search rather than to one video, because a link to one video eventually rots.
This entry was written for Star Student in our own words — it is a summary, not a source. Here is where the people who actually hold these facts keep them. Go and check.
Your own textbook ↗Balbharati publishes the textbooks free to read online. Your chapter is the thing to check first — an encyclopedia is a summary, and the syllabus is the syllabus.Last gone through: 1 October 2026 · How these entries are written
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