Matter and Life

Matter and Life

	Matter, anything that has mass and occupies space, may exist in a solid, liquid, or gaseous state.

		If you have ever miscalculated as you left a room and banged your hip on a table edge or a door frame, you have had a concrete example of an encounter with matter. And although we rarely think about it, we walk through air all the time, and air is also a form of matter. Matter can be simply defined as anything that has mass and occupies space. Matter may exist in any of three states, as a solid, a liquid, or agas, depending on the amount of energy in the system. For example, water is one of the most common substances on earth and one of the few commonly found in all three states of matter: solid (ice), liquid, and gas (water vapor).

		As you look around the world we live in, almost everything you perceive is composed of matter. The exception is energy. Energy can be defined for our purposes as the capacity to do work. In biological terms, that work involves everything from throwing a telephone pole across a field in the Scottish game called "throwing the caber" to the slightest activity in a single cell. It is obvious that energy is important to life processes (Source: Avila, Vernon L. Biology : Investigating Life On Earth Jones and Bartlett/Bookmark Series in Biology)

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