sog said:
Matter, mass, and molecules. Does all three always exist together no matter how much energy there is?
Of those three terms, 'matter' is not a well-defined physical quantity. You may find the term used in pop-sci books or lower level texts, but never by itself in any physics publication. But for casual discussion, it's fair game to use the word 'matter' to describe really any kind of stuff.
Do molecules exist inside all matter?
No. They exist only within molecular matter (hence, the name). In this kind of matter, all the chemical properties are manifested by a single unit identified such that the bonding energy between the atoms of the unit is large compared to interaction energies between neighboring units.
Thus, for example, almost all gases and liquids are made of molecules (but not, for instance, mercury). Plasmas, and network/crystalline solids (like most metals) are NOT made up of molecules. When you break any of these things down to smaller and smaller bits, there will be a point where you will no longer see the properties of the collection being exhibited. At this point, however, you have something with millions of particles (atoms) in it, and does not satisfy the definition of molecule used above.
Solids that
are made of molecules are called molecular solids. Consider, for instance, a polymeric material. The average bonding of atoms within a polymer chain is much stronger than the average bonding strength between neighboring polymer chains. So, it's fair to call each of these polymer chains a single molecule. In molecular solids, the forces between molecules are typically dipole interactions, van der waals forces or hydrogen-bonds - these are all noticeably weaker than the covalent/ionic bonds that make up the molecule.
Also, naturally, any part of an individual molecule itself can not be made up of molecules - this includes atoms and all subatomic particles.
Now if you wish, you may include the atoms in say, Helium gas as molecules (the trivial case - monoatomic molecules) where you must extend the definition so that you now require that the interaction energy between units be small compared to the (electronic) energy levels (of importance) of a single unit.
I think molecules exist in all matter. I have been researching, but have not found anything conclusive. I drew that conclusion long ago in school.
Now you know that's wrong.
Someone is certain that steel has no molecules, but i have evidence it has and now they ran to that the carbides in steel have molecules. Now i have to prove that making steel does not cause molecules to go away or go out of existence.
If you go back and apply the definition above, you'll see that steel is NOT made of molecules (of course, for that, you'll need to first understand what steel is). Carbides, nitrides, phosphides, sulfides, silicides and other such inclusions in steels are still not necessarily made of molecules. Yes, they are compounds, but they too are typically either crystalline inclusions, or one component of a solid solution, or are clusters. In all these cases, you can't say they are made of molecules. However, there are many cases where individual molecules of these compounds live within a grain boundary, somewhat loosely bonded to the surrounding material. But this only says that if you look hard, you may find some number of molecules of intermetallic or ceramic compounds inside steel - not that steel itself is made up of molecules (it isn't - the vast majority of it is a crystalline solid).
Note also, that sometimes, scientists will loosely use the term molecule to describe a repeat unit in a crytalline solid. For instance, while salt consists of repeating units of NaCl, it is not a molecular solid, but one may "casually" say that it is made up of NaCl molecules. However, this is not strictly true of a chunk of salt. When the salt is dissolved in water, you can distinguish individual molecules, but when it crystallizes out, the molecules lose their identity and simply become repeat units of a larger collective (sort of like the Borg).
I also now have to pin down every element in steel to having molecules and if they do then for sure steel has molecules (this is so rediculous).
As explained above, the elemental matter can not be made of molecules unless we are talking about a noble gas (where we use the trivial extension).
If i can get convincing evidence it is in all matter or mass no matter what happens to it then that should satisfy everyone.
In this case, the unequivocal answer is that you will not find evidence in support of the premise because the premise is flawed. All matter is not made up of molecules.
