Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Matter shopping experience:
1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Matter offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Matter at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.
2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about
3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Matter? Wrong! If the Matter is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.
4. Questions - Got a question about Matter then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....
5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Matter? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Matter and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.
6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Matter wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.
7. Feedback - happy with your Matter then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.
8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Matter site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site
9. Contact - got a question about Matter, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.
10. Payment - ready to pay for your Matter, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.
In chemistry and physics,
matter is commonly defined as the
Chemical substance of which physical objects are composed, not counting the contribution of various energy or force-fields, which are not usually considered to be matter per se (though they may contribute to the mass of objects). Matter constitutes much of the
observable universe, although again, light is not ordinarily considered matter. Unfortunately, for scientific purposes, "matter" is somewhat loosely defined.
Definition
Matter is the stuff which things are made of and consists of
chemical substances. These are made of atoms, which are made of protons, neutrons and
electrons. In this way, 'matter' is contrasted with 'energy'; inversely 'energy' is an expression of 'matter'. Everything in the world has matter.
In
physics, there is no broad consensus as to an exact definition of "matter". Physicists generally do not use the word when precision is needed, preferring instead to speak of the more clearly defined concepts of
mass, energy and Elementary particle.
A possible definition of matter which at least some physicists use Povh, Rith, Scholz, Zetche,
Particles and Nuclei, 1999, ISBN 3540438238 is that it is everything that is constituted of elementary particles fermions. These are the leptons, including the electron, and the
quarks, including the up and down quarks of which
protons and
neutrons are made. Since protons, neutrons and electrons combine to form atoms, atoms, molecules and the bulk substances which they make up are all matter. Matter also includes the various
baryons and mesons. Things which are not matter include light (photons) and the other gauge bosons.
However, this definition is not always satisfying when examined closely. In particular, under this definition things may have mass without being matter:
- W and Z bosons have mass, but are not elementary fermions.
- Any two photons which are not moving parallel to each other, taken as a system, have an invariant mass.
- Glueballs have mass due to their binding energy, but contain no particle with mass, nor any elementary fermions.
And they may be matter without having mass:
- Most of the mass of protons and neutrons comes from the binding energy between the quarks, not the masses of the quarks themselves.
- One of the three types of neutrinos may be massless.
Usage note regarding
matter and
anti-matter
There is a semantic difficulty with the word "matter", since it has two meanings, one of which includes the other. "Matter" may mean either:
The opposite of anti-matter (e.g. electrons, but not positrons)
Both matter as defined in the previous line and anti-matter (e.g. both electrons and positrons)
The same difficulty occurs with the word
particle.
Properties of matter
As individual particles
Quarks combine to form hadrons. Because of the principle of color confinement which occurs in the strong interaction, quarks never exist unbound from other quarks. Among the hadrons are the proton and the neutron. Usually these nuclei are surrounded by a cloud of electrons. A nucleus with as many electrons as protons is thus electrically neutral and is called an atom, otherwise it is an ion.
Leptons do not feel the strong force and so can exist unbound from other particles. On Earth, electrons are generally bound in atoms, but it is easy to free them, a fact which is exploited in the
cathode ray tube. Muons may briefly form bound states known as
muonium. Neutrinos feel neither the strong nor the
electromagnetic interactions. They are never bound to other particles.
As bulk matter
Homogeneous matter has a definite composition and properties and any amount of it has the same composition and properties. It may be a mixture, such as brass, or elemental, like pure
iron.
Heterogeneous matter, such as granite, does not have a definite composition.
Phases
In
bulk, matter can exist in several different phases of matters, according to
pressure and
temperature. A phase is a state of a macroscopic physical system that has relatively uniform chemical composition and physical properties (i.e.
density,
crystal structure, refractive index, and so forth). These phases include the three familiar ones —
solids,
liquids, and
gases — as well as plasma (physics)s,
superfluids,
supersolids, Bose-Einstein condensates, fermionic condensates,
liquid crystals,
strange matter and
quark-gluon plasmas. There are also the
paramagnetism and ferromagnetism phases of magnetic materials. As conditions change, matter may change from one phase into another. These phenomena are called
phase transitions, and their energetics are studied in the field of
thermodynamics.
In small quantities, matter can exhibit properties that are entirely different from those of bulk material and may not be well described by any phase.
Phases are sometimes called
states of matter, but this term can lead to confusion with thermodynamics states. For example, two gases maintained at different pressures are in different thermodynamic states, but the same "state of matter".
Antimatter
In particle physics and quantum chemistry,
antimatter is matter that is composed of the antiparticles of those that constitute normal matter. If a particle and its antiparticle come into contact with each other, the two annihilation; that is, they may both be converted into other particles with equal energy in accordance with Einstein's equation
E=MC2. These new particles may be high-energy photons (gamma rays) or other particle–antiparticle pairs. The resulting particles are endowed with an amount of kinetic energy equal to the difference between the rest mass of the products of the annihilation and the rest mass of the original particle-antiparticle pair, which is often quite large.
Antimatter is not found naturally on Earth, except very briefly and in vanishingly small quantities (as the result of
radioactive decay or cosmic rays). This is because antimatter which came to exist on Earth outside the confines of a suitable physics laboratory would almost instantly meet the ordinary matter that Earth is made of, and be annihilated. Antiparticles and some stable antimatter (such as
antihydrogen) can be made in tiny amounts, but not in enough quantity to do more than test a few of its theoretical properties.
There is considerable speculation both in science and
science fiction as to why the observable universe is apparently almost entirely matter, whether other places are almost entirely antimatter instead, and what might be possible if antimatter could be harnessed, but at this time the apparent asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the visible universe is one of the great unsolved problems in physics. Possible processes by which it came about are explored in more detail under baryogenesis.
Dark matter
In
cosmology, most models of the early universe and
big bang require the existence of so called
dark matter. This matter would have energy and mass, but would NOT be composed of either elementary fermions (as above) OR gauge bosons. As such, it would be composed of particles unknown to present science. Its existence is inferential at this point.
References
See also
In chemistry and physics,
matter is commonly defined as the
Chemical substance of which physical objects are composed, not counting the contribution of various
energy or force-fields, which are not usually considered to be matter per se (though they may contribute to the mass of objects). Matter constitutes much of the
observable universe, although again, light is not ordinarily considered matter. Unfortunately, for scientific purposes, "matter" is somewhat loosely defined.
Definition
Matter is the stuff which things are made of and consists of chemical substances. These are made of atoms, which are made of protons, neutrons and electrons. In this way, 'matter' is contrasted with '
energy'; inversely 'energy' is an expression of 'matter'. Everything in the world has matter.
In
physics, there is no broad consensus as to an exact definition of "matter". Physicists generally do not use the word when precision is needed, preferring instead to speak of the more clearly defined concepts of
mass, energy and
Elementary particle.
A possible definition of matter which at least some physicists use Povh, Rith, Scholz, Zetche,
Particles and Nuclei, 1999, ISBN 3540438238 is that it is everything that is constituted of
elementary particles fermions. These are the leptons, including the electron, and the
quarks, including the up and down quarks of which
protons and
neutrons are made. Since protons, neutrons and electrons combine to form atoms, atoms, molecules and the bulk substances which they make up are all matter. Matter also includes the various baryons and mesons. Things which are not matter include light (photons) and the other
gauge bosons.
However, this definition is not always satisfying when examined closely. In particular, under this definition things may have mass without being matter:
- W and Z bosons have mass, but are not elementary fermions.
- Any two photons which are not moving parallel to each other, taken as a system, have an invariant mass.
- Glueballs have mass due to their binding energy, but contain no particle with mass, nor any elementary fermions.
And they may be matter without having mass:
- Most of the mass of protons and neutrons comes from the binding energy between the quarks, not the masses of the quarks themselves.
- One of the three types of neutrinos may be massless.
Usage note regarding
matter and
anti-matter
There is a semantic difficulty with the word "matter", since it has two meanings, one of which includes the other. "Matter" may mean either:
The opposite of anti-matter (e.g. electrons, but not positrons)
Both matter as defined in the previous line and anti-matter (e.g. both electrons and positrons)
The same difficulty occurs with the word
particle.
Properties of matter
As individual particles
Quarks combine to form hadrons. Because of the principle of
color confinement which occurs in the strong interaction, quarks never exist unbound from other quarks. Among the hadrons are the proton and the neutron. Usually these nuclei are surrounded by a cloud of electrons. A nucleus with as many electrons as protons is thus electrically neutral and is called an atom, otherwise it is an
ion.
Leptons do not feel the strong force and so can exist unbound from other particles. On Earth, electrons are generally bound in atoms, but it is easy to free them, a fact which is exploited in the
cathode ray tube. Muons may briefly form bound states known as
muonium. Neutrinos feel neither the strong nor the
electromagnetic interactions. They are never bound to other particles.
As bulk matter
Homogeneous matter has a definite composition and properties and any amount of it has the same composition and properties. It may be a mixture, such as
brass, or elemental, like pure iron.
Heterogeneous matter, such as granite, does not have a definite composition.
Phases
In
bulk, matter can exist in several different phases of matters, according to
pressure and
temperature. A phase is a state of a macroscopic physical system that has relatively uniform chemical composition and physical properties (i.e.
density,
crystal structure, refractive index, and so forth). These phases include the three familiar ones —
solids,
liquids, and gases — as well as plasma (physics)s, superfluids, supersolids,
Bose-Einstein condensates,
fermionic condensates, liquid crystals, strange matter and
quark-gluon plasmas. There are also the
paramagnetism and
ferromagnetism phases of
magnetic materials. As conditions change, matter may change from one phase into another. These phenomena are called
phase transitions, and their energetics are studied in the field of
thermodynamics.
In small quantities, matter can exhibit properties that are entirely different from those of bulk material and may not be well described by any phase.
Phases are sometimes called
states of matter, but this term can lead to confusion with
thermodynamics states. For example, two gases maintained at different pressures are in different thermodynamic states, but the same "state of matter".
Antimatter
In particle physics and quantum chemistry,
antimatter is matter that is composed of the
antiparticles of those that constitute normal matter. If a particle and its antiparticle come into contact with each other, the two annihilation; that is, they may both be converted into other particles with equal
energy in accordance with
Einstein's equation
E=MC2. These new particles may be high-energy
photons (gamma rays) or other particle–antiparticle pairs. The resulting particles are endowed with an amount of kinetic energy equal to the difference between the rest mass of the products of the annihilation and the rest mass of the original particle-antiparticle pair, which is often quite large.
Antimatter is not found naturally on Earth, except very briefly and in vanishingly small quantities (as the result of radioactive decay or cosmic rays). This is because antimatter which came to exist on Earth outside the confines of a suitable physics laboratory would almost instantly meet the ordinary matter that Earth is made of, and be annihilated. Antiparticles and some stable antimatter (such as antihydrogen) can be made in tiny amounts, but not in enough quantity to do more than test a few of its theoretical properties.
There is considerable speculation both in
science and science fiction as to why the observable universe is apparently almost entirely matter, whether other places are almost entirely antimatter instead, and what might be possible if antimatter could be harnessed, but at this time the apparent
asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the visible universe is one of the great unsolved problems in physics. Possible processes by which it came about are explored in more detail under baryogenesis.
Dark matter
In cosmology, most models of the early universe and big bang require the existence of so called
dark matter. This matter would have energy and mass, but would NOT be composed of either elementary fermions (as above) OR gauge bosons. As such, it would be composed of particles unknown to present science. Its existence is inferential at this point.
References
See also
M A T T E R - Materials Science & Engineering educational software
is MATTER? what do we do? how to contact us. external links. FAQ s. MATTER for universities ... our online resources for materials science.....other online resources.....and our cd ...
Diffraction
solidification,diffraction,TEM,ferrous,metallurgy, materials, matter ... Storyboard: Peter Goodhew, University of Liverpool Ann Fretwell. Development:
Amazon.co.uk: Matter: Iain M. Banks: Books
Amazon.co.uk: Matter: Iain M. Banks: Books ... RRP: £18.99 : Price: £11.19 & eligible for Free UK delivery on orders over £15 with Super Saver Delivery. See details and ...
Definition: matter from Online Medical Dictionary
The Online Medical Dictionary is a searchable dictionary of definitions from medicine, science and technology.
Matter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In science, matter is commonly defined as the substance of which physical objects are composed, not counting the contribution of various energy or force-fields, which are not ...
BBC - Schools Science Clips - Ages 8-9
A menu of 6 interactive science experiments for 8-9 year olds. ... The activities below are now in KS2 Bitesize
BBC - Schools Science Clips - Ages 9-10
A menu of 6 interactive science experiments for 9-10 year olds. ... The activities below are now in KS2 Bitesize
Initiative for Schools Home Page
Contents Introduction 11-16 resources A-level resources Software evaluation Interactive Chemistry: Welcome to the MATTER ...
Women Matter - VSO
VSO is an international development charity that works through volunteers ... Women Matter Women Matter - Campaign Success. On 2 June, the Department for International Development ...
Track-A-Matter
User Name: Password: Please enter your username and password
