What is matter?

WHAT IS MATTER?

•      The object that occupies space and has mass is called matter.

•      Everything around us is made up of matter.

        For example: chocolate cake, ice, oxygen etc.

•      Even, we, the human beings are made up of matter.

•      Matter makes up the walls of your house and your classroom.

•      Matter is large as well as small.

•      So, we can say that objects occupy space.

•      But objects have mass too. (Mass is related to how much something weighs.)

•      Let us take an example of potato.

•      Let’s observe the smaller parts of potato.

Figure 1: Matter around us is made up of atoms

•      These small parts of the potato are called atoms.

•      Anything we see and can feel is made up of matter.

•      All atoms are too small to be seen with an aided eye or even a microscope.

More about Matter:

•      Matter is composed of different kind of atoms.

       For example, silver is made of one kind of atom- silver atoms.

•      Matter can change from one form to another.

•      Like ice in the soda melts; glass melts; etc.

•      When ice in the soda melts, where does it go? What does it become?

•      As you all know that ice is water in the solid state.

•      When ice in the soda melts, it gets converted into liquid state.

•      Thus, we can conclude that:- there are three states of matter:

       1. SOLID

       2. LIQUID

       3. GAS