Steel, plastic and wood are solids at room temperature. Ice is solid water. The particles in a solid are:
Strong forces, called bonds, attract the particles towards each other. This means that the particles in a solid:
The table shows some of the properties of solids and why they are like this:
|They have a fixed shape and cannot flow||The particles cannot move from place to place|
|They cannot be compressed (squashed)||The particles are close together and have no space to move into|
Solids such as concrete are useful for buildings and their foundations because they cannot be compressed.