states of matter

The states of matter are solid, liquid, gas, and sometimes plasma. Most substances can assume any form by altering the temperature and pressure.

glass.

it is a liquid. it appears to be a solid because it is so incredibly viscous that any noticable flow takes hundreds of years.

Jello.

Aren't there are few more states of matter - the exotic ones like bose-einstein condensates, fermonic condensates ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_(matter)

The most familiar examples of phases are solids, liquids, and gases. Less familiar phases include: plasmas and quark-gluon plasmas; Bose-Einstein condensates and fermionic condensates; strange matter; liquid crystals; superfluids and supersolids; and the paramagnetic and ferromagnetic phases of magnetic materials.

A super fluid for example is liquid helium below 4 degrees kelvin - it is totally frictionless and has perfect viscosity by all our tests. B-E condensates are hundreds or thousands of again super cooled atoms all acting as one large atom rather than an group of individuals.

Hydrogen at extremely high pressure and temperature reaches a degenerate state where nuclear fusion may occur. Also super-critical fuilds (check wiki - within that link too) sit on a boundary between instanteous phase changes.

glass was the response the teacher was looking for.

Poor answer as glass to a scientist is only a liquid, never a solid. It's close to the border - but it is clearly a liquid, never, ever a solid. Only to a lay person is glass a solid, not a liquid. If you can "describe" it as both states to some audience - you please neither the scientist nor the lay person with this description. It comes down to a definitional standard and I'm afraid science defines its exact usage and it has only one correct answer - liquid.

Let it pass - poorly asked question, well answered.

Wrong. Glass is neither liquid nor solid, its a glass - the fourth state of matter (or fifth if you include plasma).

I was going to say that it's a common misconception that glass is a liquid.
It doesn't flow either.

Glass is interesting stuff. Having dozed through some lectures at the Department of Glass technology at the University of Sheffield, more years ago than I care to remember...I do remember a melt of silica and other oxides if cooled below a certain temperature ceases to be a super cooled liquid and below the glass transition temperature is no longer capable of crystallising because of its viscosity and becomes a glass. Its like a flash shot of a liquid...liquid in molecular "structure" but not moving - behaving like a solid in practise.

Interesting "splat cooling" of certain metals can produce the same affect, a metal by compostion, but glaseous not crystalline in its atomic structure.