Tag: matter

Matter is generally considered to be anything that has mass and volume. The volume is determined by the space in three dimensions that it occupies. The mass is determined by its rest mass (or invariant mass), which is measured by the acceleration a body has when a force is applied. The greater the mass, the slower the acceleration for the same force. Matter is thus a general term for the substance of which all observable physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles that have mass, but this definition confuses mass and matter, which are not the same. Different fields use the term in different and sometimes incompatible ways; there is no single agreed scientific meaning of the word “matter,” even though the term “mass” is better-defined.
For much of the history of the natural sciences people have contemplated the exact nature of matter. The idea that matter was built of discrete building blocks, the so-called particulate theory of matter, was first put…