What’s the matter?

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Matter is anything that occupies space and has weight. It means everything!

Is air a matter? Yes it is, though you don’t see it but it occupies space and it has molecular mass of 29 g/mol. The air we breathe is composed of 21% Oxygen, 78% Nitrogen and 1% other gases.

Basically there are three states of matter and they are solid, liquid and gas. The other two are quite complex to understand and cannot occur in normal conditions, Plasma is the fourth one and Bose-Einstein condensate as the fifth state.

So let’s focus on Solid, Liquid and Gaseous states.

Solid has definite shape and volume. Examples are stone and steel.

Liquid has a definite volume but takes the shape of the container. Examples are water and oil.

Gas has neither definite volume nor a definite shape. Examples are oxygen and helium.

Some matters can exist not only on one state, a perfect example is water. Water is naturally in liquid state but once it is subjected to an increase in temperature can be converted to water vapor or when subjected to a decrease in temperature turn into ice.

from Chem4Kids

The change from one state to another, in water's case from ice to liquid, then from liquid to gas are called physical changes because it only changes the appearance but the composition will still be of water or H2O.

A Wasteful Earth Day

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In commemoration of Earth Day let me discuss a little about waste management, it can give you a wider picture on how your waste is being managed. You’d be thankful you’re not the one taking care of that.

Basically there are 3 kinds of waste – Gaseous, Liquid and Solid Wastes. These wastes if not properly managed will then become pollutants.

Waste Management flows in a cycle: Monitoring, Collection, Transportation, Processing, Disposal / Recycle.

Gaseous Wastes – we really cannot quantify gaseous wastes from individuals or communities, but usually those factories and vehicles have some filtering equipments.

Liquid Wastes – depending on the nature of the liquid waste but the main step here is the processing. Usually, a chemical is added to the liquid waste and let those react. For example, an acidic waste is neutralized by adding some basic chemical.

Solid Wastes – here goes the majority of wastes, on a daily basis tons of solid wastes are produced by households alone. The key point here is to recycle, separate the non biodegradable (bottles, plastics, papers, tin cans) and biodegradable (food wastes). Then these biodegradable are processed in a landfill.

A landfill as the name suggests, where the biodegradable waste is covered with soil (but still some treatment or processing is done). It is similar to backyard composting but in a much larger scale.

I find it sad whenever setting up of sanitary landfill is being opposed to. There is really no other way to manage our solid waste.

Someone, somewhere, sometime, somehow it needs to be done.

What we can do is to be mindful of our wastes. To reduce waste production, because elimination is totally out of the picture.