Microscopic
If one could observe a gas under a powerful microscope, one would see a collection of particles (molecules, atoms, ions, electrons, etc.) without any definite shape or volume that are in more or less random motion. These neutral gas particles only change direction when they collide with another particle or with the sides of the container. In an ideal gas, these collisions are perfectly elastic. This particle or microscopic view of a gas is described by the Kinetic-molecular theory. The assumptions behind this theory can be found in the postulates section of Kinetic Theory.
Read more about this topic: Gas
Famous quotes containing the word microscopic:
“The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it!—that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms—nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)