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Chemical reactions are usually characterized by a chemical change, and they yield one or more products, which usually have properties different from the reactants. Reactions often consist of a sequence of individual sub-steps, the so-called elementary reactions , and the information on the precise course of action is part of the reaction ...
In physics, chemistry, and other related fields like biology, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas, and in rare cases, plasma.
When a substance undergoes a phase transition (changes from one state of matter to another) it usually either takes up or releases energy. For example, when water evaporates, the increase in kinetic energy as the evaporating molecules escape the attractive forces of the liquid is reflected in a decrease in temperature.
Strange matter: A type of quark matter that may exist inside some neutron stars close to the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit (approximately 2–3 solar masses). May be stable at lower energy states once formed. Quark matter: Hypothetical phases of matter whose degrees of freedom include quarks and gluons Color-glass condensate
Forms of matter that are not composed of molecules and are organized by different forces can also be considered different states of matter. Superfluids (like Fermionic condensate) and the quark–gluon plasma are examples. In a chemical equation, the state of matter of the chemicals may be shown as (s) for solid, (l) for liquid, and (g) for gas.
One example of deposition is the process by which, in sub-freezing air, water vapour changes directly to ice without first becoming a liquid. This is how frost and hoar frost form on the ground or other surfaces, including leaves. For deposition to occur, thermal energy must be removed from a gas.
From a thermodynamics point of view, at the melting point the change in Gibbs free energy ∆G of the substances is zero, but there are non-zero changes in the enthalpy (H) and the entropy (S), known respectively as the enthalpy of fusion (or latent heat of fusion) and the entropy of fusion.
Some chemical substances can be combined or converted into new substances by means of chemical reactions. Chemicals that do not possess this ability are said to be inert. Pure water is an example of a chemical substance, with a constant composition of two hydrogen atoms bonded to a single oxygen atom (i.e. H 2 O).