What kind of charge does plasma have

High energy photons, from gamma rays or X-rays or ultraviolet radiation, can also create a plasma by knocking electrons away from their atoms. High-voltage electricity can also create plasmas. Plasmas sometimes are created by humans.

Some types of electrical lights contain plasmas. Electricity in fluorescent lights creates a plasma. Colorful neon lights, often used in signs, also use electricity to convert a gas into glowing plasma. Certain types of flat-screen televisions make use of plasma as well. Plasmas are also common in nature. In fact, plasma is the most common state of "ordinary" matter that is, all matter other than the mysterious "dark matter" that astronomers have been puzzling over in recent years in the universe.

Far more matter is in the plasma state than in the liquid, solid, or gaseous states. Lightning strikes create plasma via a very strong jolt of electricity. Most of the Sun , and other stars, is in a plasma state. We have all learned that matter appears in three states: solid, liquid, and gaseous. But in recent years more and more attention has been directed to the properties of matter in a fourth and unique state, which we call plasma.

The higher the temperature, the more freedom the constituent particles of the material experience. In solid bodies the atoms and molecules are subject to strict discipline and are constrained to rigid order. In a liquid they can move, but their freedom is limited. In a gas, molecules or atoms move freely; inside the atoms the electrons perform a harmonic dance over their orbits, according to the laws of quantum mechanics.

In a plasma, however, the electrons are liberated from the atoms and acquire complete freedom of motion. A plasma is an ionized gas that is reflective to low-frequency electromagnetic waves like radio waves. Described on a more basic level, a plasma shields out electric fields.

A plasma is able to do this because enough negatively-charged electrons and positively-charged ions are locally free and are able bind to each other in a long-range, collective way. The collective behavior of ions and electrons means that they are able to respond strongly to incident electric fields and move to cancel out these fields.

Therefore, a stricter definition of a plasma is a gas where there are enough freed electrons and ions that they act collectively. The distance that an external electric field can reach into a cloud of charged particles is characterized by the "Debye length". The more atoms that are ionized, the stronger the collective oscillations of the charges, and the smaller the Debye length. The strictest definition of a plasma is therefore an ionized gas with enough ionization that the Debye length is significantly smaller than the width of the gas cloud.

In a flame, ionization of the air atoms occurs because the temperature is high enough to cause the atoms to knock into each other and rip off electrons. Therefore, in a flame, the amount of ionization depends on the temperature.

Other mechanisms can lead to ionization. For instance, in lightning, strong electric currents cause the ionization. In the ionosphere, sunlight causes the ionization.