• Question: What exactly is plasma physics and what are its affects ?

    Asked by anon-274098 to Ben on 3 Dec 2020.
    • Photo: Ben Pritchard

      Ben Pritchard answered on 3 Dec 2020:


      Heating a solid melts it into a liquid (ice to water). Heating a liquid evaporates it into a gas (water to steam). A gas is just a collection of individual water molecules. What happens when you heat those molecules?
      The things inside the molecules separate and then the gas turns into this soup of elementary particles, like protons, electrons and neutrons. So a plasma is like a really hot gas.
      A plasma physicist looks at the properties of this plasma substance, and I am focusing on controlling it to provide people with clean unlimited free energy.
      This is just one branch of plasma physics. The machine you are using to write questions and read this answer on is made up from lots of little pieces of plastic called chips. These chips are etched (like etching your name onto a tree with a key) using a plasma.
      Plasma physics can also be used to modify surfaces of things and provide coatings, and other stars are big balls of plasma. Therefore all life on Earth should thank plasma’s!

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