The air you’re breathing, the chair you’re sitting in, the orange juice you may have had for breakfast, and you—all these things have something in common: they’re all examples of matter.
Most of the matter you see every day comes in one of three forms. It may be a solid, like grains of sand. It may be a liquid, like the water in the ocean. It may be a gas, like the air that helps a kite stay aloft. Matter may also be a plasma, like what’s inside a fluorescent light. It doesn’t matter how different these forms of matter seem to be, they—and all matter—are alike in some important ways.
