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‘Matter’ What it is?
MATTER IS ALL AROUND US We seldom stop to think about it as we go about our daily lives, but we are matter. Everything we detect in the universe is matter. It’s the fundamental building block of everything: you, me and all the life on Earth, the planet we live on, the stars, and galaxies. It’s typically defined as anything that has mass and occupies a volume of space. We’re made up of atoms and molecules, which are also matter. The definition of matter is anything that has mass and takes up space. This includes normal matter as well as dark matter. However, that definition is reall only extended to normal matter. Things change when we get to dark matter. Let’s talk about the matter we CAN see, first. NORMAL MATTER Normal matter is the matter that we see all around us. It’s often referred to as “baryonic matter” and is made of leptons (electrons for example) and quarks (the building blocks of protons and neutrons), which can be used to build atoms and molecules which, …
Sam