Is Air Matter?

Matter is defined as any substance that has mass and volume. The balloons below show us that Air can take up space, and therefore has a volume. If you had more air to the balloon, it will take up more space. If you look at the image below you can see that if we inflate 2 balloons with the same amount of air, they will balance out. If we then release the air from one of the balloons, we can see that the inflated balloon has more mass. This proves that the air inside of the balloon has mass. Since Air has both mass and volume, we can say that Air (and all gases) are in fact matter.

What happens when a gas is heated?

Please click through the following links to see what the atoms inside gases, liquids, and solids are doing.

We then did a lab (found below) to observe what happens when gas is heated in a closed container.

We can also see how the atoms in a gas are affected by temperature here.