States of Matter - The Dancing Particles
The scene - a dance floor
On the dance floor are dancers with arms linked in a row. If you give the dancers four arms you can form a lattice.
The music represents the temperature - the faster the beat, the more energetic the dancing.
If you are COMPLETELY mad you can do this with the students.
The music is slow.
The solid particles sway to the music (they vibrate), but they don't have much sense of rhythm and don't do so in time.
The phalanx of dancers holds their shape.
The music gets faster and faster, the swaying to the music gets greater and greater until ...
The solid particles sway to the music (they vibrate), but they don't have much sense of rhythm and don't do so in time.
The phalanx of dancers holds their shape.
The music gets faster and faster, the swaying to the music gets greater and greater until ...
The particles sway so energetically they break the link with one particle next to them.
With one arm linked they move around the other particle and bump into a new particle with which they links arms.
Thus the particles move around 'country dance' style linking and unlinking arms.
The group of dancers has no shape but stays together.
The music gets faster and faster, the particles move around faster and faster until ....
With one arm linked they move around the other particle and bump into a new particle with which they links arms.
Thus the particles move around 'country dance' style linking and unlinking arms.
The group of dancers has no shape but stays together.
The music gets faster and faster, the particles move around faster and faster until ....
The particles are moving too fast for linked arms to hold.
They dance 'nutter style' racing across the dance floor bouncing off other dancers and the walls.
The dancers take up all available space.
This model can be extended when appropriate.
- In all states - spread of energies
- In the solid - expansion with temperature
- Liquids - especially with four-armed dancers, surface tension
- Liquids - loosely bound balloons dissolving into liquid
- Liquids - diffusion
- Liquids - evaporation
- Gases - Brownian motion (large obstacles on the dance floor)
- Gases - diffusion
and probably lots more.
