liquid
liquid, in physics, one of the three principal states of matter, intermediate between gas and crystalline solid.
Physical properties of liquids
The most obvious physical properties of a liquid are its retention of volume and its conformation to the shape of its container. When a liquid substance is poured into a vessel, it takes the shape of the vessel, and, as long as the substance stays in the liquid state, it will remain inside the vessel. Furthermore, when a liquid is poured from one vessel to another, it retains its volume (as long as there is no vaporization or change in temperature) but not its shape. These properties serve as convenient criteria for distinguishing the liquid state from the solid and gaseous states. Gases, for example, expand to fill their container so that the volume they occupy is the same as that of the container. Solids retain both their shape and volume when moved from one container to another.
Liquids may be divided into two general categories: pure liquids and liquid mixtures. On Earth, water is the most abundant liquid, although much of the water with which organisms come into contact is not in pure form but is a mixture in which various substances are dissolved. Such mixtures include those fluids essential to life—blood, for example—beverages, and seawater. Seawater is a liquid mixture in which a variety of salts have been dissolved in water. Even though in pure form these salts are solids, in oceans they are part of the liquid phase. Thus, liquid mixtures contain substances that in their pure form may themselves be liquids, solids, or even gases.
The liquid state sometimes is described simply as the state that occurs between the solid and gaseous states, and for simple molecules this distinction is unambiguous. However, clear distinction between the liquid, gaseous, and solid states holds only for those substances whose molecules are composed of a small number of atoms. When the number exceeds about 20, the liquid may often be cooled below the true melting point to form a glass, which has many of the mechanical properties of a solid but lacks crystalline order. If the number of atoms in the molecule exceeds about 100–200, the classification into solid, liquid, and gas ceases to be useful. At low temperatures such substances are usually glasses or amorphous solids, and their rigidity falls with increasing temperature—i.e., they do not have fixed melting points; some may, however, form true liquids. With these large molecules, the gaseous state is not attainable, because they decompose chemically before the temperature is high enough for the liquid to evaporate. Synthetic and natural high polymers (e.g., nylon and rubber) behave in this way.
If the molecules are large, rigid, and either roughly planar or linear, as in cholesteryl acetate or p-azoxyanisole, the solid may melt to an anisotropic liquid (i.e., one that is not uniform in all directions) in which the molecules are free to move about but have great difficulty in rotating. Such a state is called a liquid crystal, and the anisotropy produces changes of the refractive index (a measure of the change in direction of light when it passes from one medium into another) with the direction of the incident light and hence leads to unusual optical effects. Liquid crystals have found widespread applications in temperature-sensing devices and in displays for watches and calculators. However, no inorganic compounds and only about 5 percent of the known organic compounds form liquid crystals. The theory of normal liquids is, therefore, predominantly the theory of the behaviour of substances consisting of simple molecules.
A liquid lacks both the strong spatial order of a solid, though it has the high density of solids, and the absence of order of a gas that results from the low density of gases—i.e., gas molecules are relatively free of each other’s influence. The combination of high density and of partial order in liquids has led to difficulties in developing quantitatively acceptable theories of liquids. Understanding of the liquid state, as of all states of matter, came with the kinetic molecular theory, which stated that matter consisted of particles in constant motion and that this motion was the manifestation of thermal energy. The greater the thermal energy of the particle, the faster it moved.
Transitions between states of matter
In very general terms, the particles that constitute matter include molecules, atoms, ions, and electrons. In a gas these particles are far enough from one another and are moving fast enough to escape each other’s influence, which may be of various kinds—such as attraction or repulsion due to electrical charges and specific forces of attraction that involve the electrons orbiting around atomic nuclei. The motion of particles is in a straight line, and the collisions that result occur with no loss of energy, although an exchange of energies may result between colliding particles. When a gas is cooled, its particles move more slowly, and those slow enough to linger in each other’s vicinity will coalesce, because a force of attraction will overcome their lowered kinetic energy and, by definition, thermal energy. Each particle, when it joins others in the liquid state, gives up a measure of heat called the latent heat of liquefaction, but each continues to move at the same speed within the liquid as long as the temperature remains at the condensation point. The distances that the particles can travel in a liquid without colliding are on the order of molecular diameters. As the liquid is cooled, the particles move more slowly still, until at the freezing temperature the attractive energy produces so high a density that the liquid freezes into the solid state. They continue to vibrate, however, at the same speed as long as the temperature remains at the freezing point, and their latent heat of fusion is released in the freezing process. Heating a solid provides the particles with the heat of fusion necessary to allow them to escape one another’s influence enough to move about in the liquid state. Further heating provides the liquid particles with their heat of evaporation, which enables them to escape one another completely and enter the vapour, or gaseous, state.
This starkly simplified view of the states of matter ignores many complicating factors, the most important being the fact that no two particles need be moving at the same speed in a gas, liquid, or solid and the related fact that even in a solid some particles may have acquired the energy necessary to exist as gas particles, while even in a gas some particles may be practically motionless for a brief time. It is the average kinetic energy of the particles that must be considered, together with the fact that the motion is random. At the interface between liquid and gas and between liquid and solid, an exchange of particles is always taking place: slow gas molecules condensing at the liquid surface and fast liquid molecules escaping into the gas. An equilibrium state is reached in any closed system, so that the number of exchanges in either direction is the same. Because the kinetic energy of particles in the liquid state can be defined only in statistical terms (i.e., every possible value can be found), discussion of the liquid (as well as the gaseous) state at the molecular level involves formulations in terms of probability functions.
Behaviour of pure liquids
Phase diagram of a pure substance
When the temperature and pressure of a pure substance are fixed, the equilibrium state of the substance is also fixed. This is illustrated in , which shows the phase diagram for pure argon. In the diagram a single phase is shown as an area, two as a line, and three as the intersection of the lines at the triple point, T. Along the line TC, called the vapour-pressure curve, liquid and vapour exist in equilibrium. The liquid region exists to the left and above this line while the gas, or vapour, region exists below it. At the upper extreme, this curve ends at the critical point, C. If line TC is crossed by moving directly from point P to S, there is a distinct phase change accompanied by abrupt changes in the physical properties of the substance (e.g., density, heat capacity, viscosity, and dielectric constant) because the vapour and liquid phases have distinctly different properties. At the critical point, however, the vapour and liquid phases become identical, and above the critical point, the two phases are no longer distinct. Thus, if the substance moves from point P to S by the path PQRS so that no phase-change lines are crossed, the change in properties will be smooth and continuous, and the specific moment when the substance converts from a liquid to a gas is not clearly defined. In fact, the path PQRS demonstrates the essential continuity of state between liquid and gas, which differ in degree but which together constitute the single fluid state. Strictly speaking, the term liquid should be applied only to the denser of the two phases on the line TC, but it is generally extended to any dense fluid state at low temperatures—i.e., to the area lying within the angle CTM.
The extension of line TC below the triple point is called the sublimation curve. It represents the equilibrium between solid and gas, and when the sublimation curve is crossed, the substance changes directly from solid to gas. This conversion occurs when dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) vaporizes at atmospheric pressure to form gaseous carbon dioxide because the triple-point pressure for carbon dioxide is greater than atmospheric pressure. Line TM is the melting curve and represents an equilibrium between solid and liquid; when this curve is crossed from left to right, solid changes to liquid with the associated abrupt change in properties.
The melting curve is initially much steeper than the vapour-pressure curve; hence, as the pressure is changed, the temperature does not change much, and the melting temperature is little affected by pressure. No substance has been found to have a critical point on this line, and there are theoretical reasons for supposing that it continues indefinitely to high temperatures and pressures, until the substance is so compressed that the molecules break up into atoms, ions, and electrons. At pressures above 106 bars (one bar is equal to 0.987 atmosphere, where one atmosphere is the pressure exerted by the air at sea level), it is believed that most substances pass into a metallic state.
It is possible to cool a gas at constant pressure to a temperature lower than that of the vapour-pressure line without producing immediate condensation, since the liquid phase forms readily only in the presence of suitable nuclei (e.g., dust particles or ions) about which the drops can grow. Unless the gas is scrupulously cleaned, such nuclei remain; a subcooled vapour is unstable and will ultimately condense. It is similarly possible to superheat a liquid to a temperature where, though still a liquid, the gas is the stable phase. Again, this occurs most readily with clean liquids heated in smooth vessels, because bubble formation occurs around foreign particles or sharp points. When the superheated liquid changes to gas, it does so with almost explosive violence. A liquid also may be subcooled to below its freezing temperature.
Representative values of phase-diagram parameters
To a certain extent the behaviour of all substances is similar to that described in . The parameters that vary from substance to substance are the particular values of the triple-point and critical-point temperature and pressure, the size of the various regions, and the slopes of the lines. Triple-point temperatures range from 14 K (0 K equals -273.15° C [-459.67° F]), for hydrogen to temperatures too high for accurate measurement. Triple-point pressures are generally low, that of carbon dioxide at 5.2 bars being one of the highest. Most are around 10-3 bar, and those of some hydrocarbons are as low as 10-7 bar. The normal melting point of a substance is defined as the melting temperature at a pressure of one atmosphere (equivalent to 1.01325 bars); it differs little from the triple-point temperature, because of the steepness of melting lines (TM in ). Critical temperatures (the maximum temperature at which a gas can be liquefied by pressure) range from 5.2 K, for helium, to temperatures too high to measure. Critical pressures (the vapour pressure at the critical temperature) are generally about 40–100 bars. The normal boiling point is the temperature at which the vapour pressure reaches one atmosphere. The normal liquid range is defined as the temperature interval between the normal melting point and the normal boiling point, but such a restriction is artificial, the true liquid range being from triple point to critical point. Substances whose triple-point pressures are above atmospheric (e.g., carbon dioxide) have no normal liquid range but sublime at atmospheric pressure.
Each of the three two-phase lines in can be described by the Clapeyron equation:
In this equation, dp/dT is the slope of the curve under consideration—i.e., either the melting, sublimation, or vapour-pressure curve. ΔH is the latent heat required for the phase change, and ΔV is the change in volume associated with the phase change. Thus, for the sublimation and vapour-pressure curves, since ΔH and ΔV are both positive (i.e., heat is required for vaporization, and the volume increases on vaporization), the slope is always positive. Although not apparent from , the slope of the sublimation curve immediately below the triple point is greater than the slope of the vapour-pressure curve immediately above it, so that the vapour-pressure curve is not continuous through the triple point. This is consistent with equation (1) because the heat of sublimation for a substance is somewhat larger than its heat of vaporization. The slope of the melting line is usually positive, but there are a few substances, such as water and bismuth, for which the melting-line slope is negative. The negative melting-line slope is consistent with equation (1) because, for these two substances, the density of the solid is less than the density of the liquid. This is the reason ice floats. For water, this negative volume change (i.e., shrinking) persists to 2.1 kilobars and -22° C, at which point the normal form of ice changes to a denser form, and thereafter the change in volume on melting is positive.
