Matter Around Us

Matter Around Us

Introduction

As we look-at our surroundings we see a variety of things made of different materials of different shapes, size, textures and colours.

The air we breathe, the food we eat, clouds, stones, plants, animals, a drop of water or a grain of sand everything is matter.

As you will recall, from a tiniest bacteria to a giant planet anything which has mass and occupies space (volume) is matter.

From very early days, human beings have been trying to understand their surroundings. Early Indian philosophers classified matter in the form of five basic elements. Tolkāppiyam says “the world is the mixture of five elements – land, fire, water, air and space. According to it everything, living and non living, was made up of these five basic elements. Ancient Greek philosophers had arrived at a similar classification of matter. Presently matter is classified based on its physical and chemical properties.