• A plasma television.hi technology plasma monitor over white image by Anatoly Tiplyashin from Fotolia.com
  
  Plasmas in physics and chemistry are gases that have had some portion of their particles ionized. While plasmas have many properties similar to gases, they are sometimes referred to as the fourth state of matter in addition to solids, gases and liquids. This is because the electrical conductivity of the ionized particles gives plasmas unique characteristics. Some examples of plasmas are the Sun, fluorescent lights, flame and lightning.
  
  

Unpredictability

• Although plasma actually represents over 99 percent of the visible universe, it does not act in a way that scientists can always predict. It is difficult to create an accurate model of plasmas as a whole because they tend to act in different ways depending on how many particles are charged, the temperature of the plasma and the velocity of the particles. After the discovery of plasma, many physicists used the activity of plasma as the basis for nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory. As a result of this unpredictability, new discoveries are still being made in this state of matter.
  
  

Variety of Properties

• Different forms of plasma have different properties in the way of energy, spatial scales and density. Some plasmas in space are microscopic while some are dense and large like the core of the Sun. Some plasmas are close to absolute zero in temperature while others are over 1 million degrees Kelvin. The energy of plasmas such as cosmic rays is more than anything that could be produced by man. Different plasmas behave differently and have wildly different attributes.
  
  

Relation to Gas

• Plasma is still essentially classified as a gas due to its many properties that are similar to gases. Plasma has no definite shape or volume like a gas unless it is put into a container. There is not a huge structural difference between gases and plasmas, as a gas in which one percent of the substance that has become ionized can begin to show plasma-like properties. There are several major differences between gas and plasma as well. For example, plasma has collective interactions between particles that occur in a wave while gas collides two particles at a time.
  
  

Electricity and Magnetism

• Plasmas are extremely good conductors of electricity. This fact is put to good use in fluorescent lamps, tesla coils, semi-conductors and plasma displays on televisions. Plasma is practically the opposite of gas; gas has low conductivity and some plasmas have nearly an infinite amount of electric conductivity. Some plasmas are highly magnetized, and some artificially created forms of plasma are generated by magnetic fields. The magnetic fields generated by plasmas in space can number over 1 billion teslas.