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6 Lies You’ve Been Told, and the Complex Truths Behind Them

clearerthinking.org · 2,045 words · saved by 1 readers

If you were a nightmare for your teachers, you might have put your hand up while your teacher was talking about these three states of matter to ask “What state of matter is lightning? Or fire?” At which point you might have seen your teacher do what teachers often have to do when children see through the simplifications of school-level explanations: sigh and tell you that things are actually a bit more complicated than you are being taught right now, but if you continue studying this stuff to higher levels, then you’ll learn more. Please, please, you nightmare child, just accept this explanation for now. In reality, lightning and fire are typically considered to be (or at least involve) a fourth state of matter: plasma. And there are more! Liquid crystal is an intermediate state (between liquid and solid). And then there are ‘exotic’ states of matter like neutron degenerate matter, Bose-Einstein condensates, and so on. The lesson is this: the world is often far more complicated than th

How many states of matter do you think there are? In school, you were probably taught that there are three: solid, liquid, and gas. If you were a nightmare for your teachers, you might have put your hand up while your teacher was talking about these three states of matter to ask “What state of matter is lightning? Or fire?” At which point you might have seen your teacher do what teachers often have to do when children see through the simplifications of school-level explanations: sigh and tell you that things are actually a bit more complicated than you are being taught right now, but if you co

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