Answer 1:
Plasmas are so hot that there is enough energy
to strip electron from the atoms to make free
electrons and ions. This is takes so much energy
that it all bonds between atoms are broken long
before you get a plasma. (There is enough heat
energy to do this in a star or nuclear explosion,
but in the lab we cheat by putting a HUGE electric
field across the chamber and hit the gas with a
laser to help pull the electrons from the atoms. I
used to work at the LaPD which was the largest
plasma device in the world in the 2001 and we
would have to wait until night time to run
experiments because we used 90% of the electricity
available for the power grid serving UCLA and Bel
air. If you want to read more here is the
link. plasmaSo
if you did put CO2 in the chamber you
would make a plasma that was C+ and O+ and
electrons when it was in the plasma form and when
it cooled might recombine to make CO2,
CO, O2, and either graphite or maybe
C60. When a plasma cools, it is a bit
like musical chairs and the atoms and electrons
recombine in any way they can. As for your
second question, most gasses, including the
helium, neon, argon etc. form solids above
freezing. Helium gas that has a mix of isotopes
(atomic mass 3 or 4) freezes into a liquid at 4K
and will not freeze at 0K and 1 atm, it can be
turned into a solid at higher pressure. The reason
for this is hydrogen, though lighter, is diatomic
and is much easier to lock into a crystal since
you can't rotate in a solid, whereas helium is
light and is mono-atomic, it needs to be pushed
into a crystal at higher pressure. This is because
you have only 2 electrons around the nucleus and
they are held very tightly making He very small.
To pack He into a solid the atoms need to be very
close and the repulsion of the nuclei and the
electrons keep the atoms apart even at 0K and 1
atm, you need to really push the atoms together to
make them solid. Helium 4 isotopes do something
very special at low temperatures called a
Bose-Einstein condensate which is not a gas or a
liquid but behaves in very odd way. It looks like
a thick smoke but does not obey normal physics (it
can flow up walls) since it is essentially a huge
atom and so follows quantum mechanical rules
instead. Hope this helps, |
Answer 2:
A plasma is a gas that has absorbed so much
energy that the outer shell electrons are 'flung'
off the atoms so you can think of it as a swarm of
positively charged ions zipping around incredibly
fast in a sea of electrons so the total charge of
the plasma is neutral, but almost all of the atoms
are ions. Since this takes such a large amount of
energy, compounds that contain more than one atom
will be torn apart before the gas turns into
plasma. Pure elements like gold, however, should
in principle formplasma without decomposing.
Temperature is a statistical definition defined
by how fast atoms or molecules in a material are
jiggling about. In solids, the atoms jiggle very
quickly back and forth but don't travel any actual
distance because there are strong forces holding
them together (coulomb's forces in the case of
salts, Van der Waal's forces in other cases). Long
story short, at absolute zero there is absolutely
no jiggling whatsoever (if there was, it wouldn't
be at absolute zero by definition) so any
attractive force between the atoms/molecules would
hold the material together and it would be a
solid. As you get arbitrarily close to absolute
zero, you will always form a solid unless there
are no attractive interactions at short distances
(which there are for all materials we have ever
encountered). Hope this helps! Click Here to return to the search form.
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