Substances and the Three States

These downloadable animations are part of the multimedia package Stuff and Substance, developed by the Gatsby Science Enhancement Programme (SEP). They can be used to emphasize that a substance can be in any of the three states and there is nothing special about room temperature states.

The state of a sample of a substance depends on the temperature in relation to its melting and boiling points. Many pupils attach great significance to the room temperature state of a substance and think that ‘solids’, ‘liquids’ and ‘gases’ are three separate kinds of substances. The two animations are formative assessment tasks. The first establishes that each of oxygen, water and common salt can be in any of the three states (NB It needs to be used with data on melting and boiling points as given in the Stuff and Substance package). The second animation links the characteristic properties of the states to particle model explanations.

These video and animation files form part of the resources in the section Substances and the Three States in the Stuff and Substance multimedia package, which provides a series of interactive pages that can be used by teachers or students in the classroom.

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