What is Matter

Whenever you look around you see stuff but do you know what that stuff is made of? Do you realize that everything you see actually has something in common? When you look around and see tables, plants, people, birds, dirt, clouds, each of these things, while very different, are all matter. Matter is anything that has mass and volume. So everything we see around us, and even some things that we cannot see, are actually matter.

Matter has two properties, mass and volume. The first property you need to know is volume. Volume is the amount of space taken up by an object. Volume can be measured in many ways. A solid’s volume can be found by measuring and multiplying it’s length, width, and height. A liquid’s volume can be found by putting it in a cup or other container. A gas’s volume can be found by trapping it in something. You can find the volume of even the tiniest particles such as a grain of sand because it still takes up space.

The second property is Mass. All matter has mass. Mass is the amount of stuff in a given space. Mass is very similar to weight in that you usually can find an object’s mass or weight by using a scale. The difference between mass and weight is weight takes into account gravity. So it is possible to have a weight of zero but it is impossible to have a mass of zero. If you had a mass of zero the object would not exist.