The States of Matter

Over the last few months in science class, I have been learning about atoms and the KMT, or the Kinetic Molecular Theory. In short, the KMT describes how atoms move and interact in various states of matter. In order to demonstrate my understanding of the KMT, I got to create a video game! This was quite the adventure, and between all the bugs and having to redo my whole game, (more on that later) I am happy not to have to do any more programming for a while. Here is the finished product!

What did I learn?

I learned about three main things: making accurate, precise, scientific observations, the KMT, and how to make a video game. To be honest, I didn’t really learn anything about atoms, as the material that my class and I did in class i had already done in previous years, and I already had a pretty in depth understanding of how to make good, objective observations. However, the silver lining of this is that I got to really focus on the video game portion of this project.

Making Good Observations

Say if you wanted to describe this image to someone who couldn’t see it. What would you say?

This image was generated by Padlet’s AI art studio

Well, you could say that it is a picture of a cute dog in front of a wall with a fire, but people could definitely misinterpret that, as this is also a cute dog in front of a wall with a fire.

This image was also generated by Padlet’s AI art studio

So clearly, there is a problem with this way of explaining things. The first problem is that I described the dog as “cute”, which is subjective, as not everyone will find it cute. (Although, if you think that dog isn’t cute, I don’t know what to say.) Now, let’s try to describe the dog objectively.  Now we should have something like this: it is a picture of a large, shaggy coated, black, Newfoundland dog in front of a wall with a fire. Here is what AI thought this looked like:

This image was also generated by Padlet’s AI art studio

Well, it sure is a lot better, but there is another problem. I said that the dog was “in front of a wall with fire”, and this is not a precise description. Let’s try “ It is a picture of a large, shaggy coated, black, Newfoundland dog in front of a fireplace sitting on a rug with its owner inside a well decorated house.” This is what this now looks like:

This image was, yet again, also generated by Padlet’s AI art studio

It isn’t perfect, but it sure is a lot better. As you can see, how you describe something and what observations you make are very important. This is very important in science, as the better we can observe properties of an object, the more we will know about it.

The KMT!!!!!

The kinetic molecular theory strives to describe how atoms move, interact, and behave in the various states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. In short, atoms in solids will vibrate and move around very slightly. Adams in liquids will move around freely, and have more distance between each other than they do solids. Atoms in gases, will behave like liquids, except with much more movement and way more space between each other. Atoms in plasma are simply atoms that are stripped from their electrons.

Personally, I know the least about plasma, and so I took the opportunity to do a some further research. It turns out over 99% of the universe is made of plasma! This is because the hydrogen in stars, is a plasma.

According to the Massachusetts Institute of technology, “Plasma is superheated matter – so hot that the electrons are ripped away from the atoms forming an ionized gas. Plasma is often called “the fourth state of matter,” along with solid, liquid and gas. Just as a liquid will boil, changing into a gas when energy is added, heating a gas will form a plasma – a soup of positively charged particles (ions) and negatively charged particles (electrons). Researchers pursue plasmas for making computer chips, rocket propulsion, cleaning the environment, destroying biological hazards, healing wounds and other exciting applications.”

Why Did I do This?

Well, I created my video game in order to answer this projects driving question, which I will tackle in the next section. on the other hand,I learned about the KMT, because it’s kind of the foundation for lots of much more complicated, science, and physics. Knowing how atoms work will allow you to understand what you need to know in order to learn more about the world of subatomic particles and quantum physics.

The Driving Question

The driving question to this project was, “How can we learn and demonstrate our knowledge of atoms in a creative and fun way?” I believe I found one of the many answers to the driving question. I have done this by creating a video game on scratch in which your goal as a player is to transform your ice cube into all four states of matter.

Thanks for reading!