Why does water have several different solid phase but only one liquid and gas phase? Is there any meaning? or any reason behind it?
Or is it just the way the nature behaves?
[Physics] Why does water have several different solid phase but only one liquid and gas phase
states-of-matter
Related Solutions
The most immediate answer would seem to be that a great variety of different crystal phases can exist because their long-range order makes it possible to classify them based on the different symmetries of their lattice structure. Since the liquid (or amorphous solid) phase only has short-range order and the gaseous phase doesn't even have that, it seems impossible for different fluid phases to exist.
However...
It turns out that it is possible for an amorphous substance (glass or liquid) to exist in different stable phases. This phenomenon, which is the amorphous counterpart of the polymorphism of crystal, is known as polyamorphism.
Quoting from Wikipedia:
Even though amorphous materials exhibit no long-range periodic atomic ordering, there is still significant and varied local structure at inter-atomic length scales (see structure of liquids and glasses). Different local structures can produce amorphous phases of the same chemical composition with different physical properties such as density.
One example is the liquid-liquid transition exhibited by some model systems, in which a transition from a low density to an high density liquid state appears.
The presence of a liquid-liquid critical point has been hypothesized to explain some thermodynamic anomalies of liquid water. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to reach this critical point experimentally, because the system undergoes spontaneous crystallization.
But it has been found out in numerical studies of some simple model systems of water that a liquid-liquid critical point is indeed present, and two distinct, stable liquid phases appear: a low density and high density liquid.
As far as gas are concerned, the absence of local structure (short-range order) makes it impossible for different phases to exist. The only exception which comes to my mind, if we want to call it a "gas", is the Bose-Einstein condensate, obtained when a dilute gas of bosons is brought to temperature close to absolute zero.
Updates
-Diffusive dynamics during the high-to-low density transition in amorphous ice (2017)
-Which way to low-density liquid water? (2017)
-Second critical point in two realistic models of water (2020)
Most substances can perform a large number of phase transitions. There are even different kinds of phase transitions and sometimes two phases can be connected by more than one process.
The quantities governing what phase transition occurs are so-called state variables; temperature and pressure are the best known representatives, but e.g. magnetic fields can also be a factor.
Depending on the state variables, there usually is one configuration that is energetically favorable. The substance will take that configuration. If the state variables change, such that a different configuration is more favorable, the substance will perform a phase transition.
This phase diagram (from Wikipedia's Phase Diagram page), shows this quite well. Using the dashed green line instead of the solid green line we have the phase diagram for water. At high temperatures and low pressures, vapour is energetically favored. If we reduce the temperature the vapour will either turn into liquid water (if the the pressure is between $p_{tp}$ oand $p_{cr}$) or directly to solid ice (if the pressure is below $p_{tp}$). You see that depending on the state variables different transitions are possible.
Now there are many more phases than the classic states solid, liquid, gaseous. Just regular ice has eleven phases and magnetic materials might change their magnetic behavior in addition to their stiffness.
Moreover, phase transitions take some time to happen and these phase diagrams assume that you change the state variables slowly enough for the transition to happen completely. It is standard practice in material science to cool down a material quickly, barring phase transitions. This can result in a material with advantageous properties, see e.g. heat treating.
What phases are available to what material is studied in materials science and there are books of tables on the topic. As you might guess by now, one can get arbitrarily detailed...
By the way, Helium also has more than two phases, as there is also a superfluid phase. All other materials can be made solid at appropriately low temperatures with potentially higher-than average pressure.
Finally, compound materials such as wood usually are not considered to make phase transitions as a whole, since the different materials that wood is made of might behave very differently at different temperatures/pressures.
Best Answer
Solid phases differ by the arrangement of the molecules. Molecules in solids stay at the same place so you can have different geometrical arrangements (different phases). In liquids and gases, molecules always move, so you cannot define a fixed arrangement.