The Exotic Matter States Behind PCs, Visual Displays, and the Future of Water
You might have learned in school that there are three phases of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. That is a useful simplification for young students, but there are in fact many, many more. In the past century or so, we’ve discovered that there are hundreds of distinct solid phases—some of which are used to build the silicon chips that run your computer. In addition, there are dozens of liquid crystal phases—some of which create the images on your laptop screen. And that’s before we even get to the really exotic stuff: quantum phases like superfluids, quark-gluon plasma, Bose-Einstein condensates, and the so-called “topological phases.”1
But before we get to that, let’s step back and discuss what we mean by the word “phase.” Like many fundamental concepts, phases are best explained by example. Let’s consider a glass of water with some ice cubes in it. The glass contains just one kind of substance: water. A whole lot of molecules of H2O.
Even though the molecules in the ice cubes are exactly the same as those in the surrounding water, there’s clearly a big difference between ice and liquid water. Most obviously, one is rigid, holding a defined shape, and one flows freely, taking the shape of its container. There are also differences in density, electrical conductivity, and a host of other physical properties. So we say that liquid water and ice are differentof a single substance.
