Question

Suppose you have a number of mystery substances. They can be of any phase of matter, any kind of material from the periodic table. They are all at the same temperature. What characteristic(s) of the substances would allow you to sort these substances according to the speed of individual atoms? What characteristic(s) would allow you to sort these substances according to total thermal energy contained Note: this answer should involve something different from the answer to part(a). question.]

Answer 1

According to speed of individual atoms, we can sort these substances as solids, liquids and gases and then into metals and non-metals.

In solids the individual particles possess very less speed, while gases possess more speed of atoms. Liquids can have intermediate velocity of the particles.

All metals in the periodic table are solids. But non-metals can be in solid, liquid or in gaseous state.

Thus we can sort all substances with very high speed and gases or liquids as non-metals definitely but solids may be metals or non-metals.

The thermal energy of a system is dependent on the temperature of the system, which is dependent on the motion of the individual particles in the system. At the same temperature, the size of the sample as more molecules, more movement, more temperature andmore thermal energy.