Laws First Law of Thermo. Second Law of Thermo. Now you need to think about states of matter a little bit. We'll start with gases. If you have a balloon, and you heat up the contents, the balloon will get larger.
Liquids expand and contract too, but there is a lot less change in their volume compared to gases.
As you can probably figure out, solids expand and contract the least of all the states of matter. There is a formula that describes how much a piece of matter will change its volume . . . The expansion coefficient is a value for each piece of matter, it is unique, just like specific heat capacity. Andrew Rader Studios, All rights reserved.