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Liquid to Gas and Back to LiquidWhen you are a liquid and want to become a gas, you need to find a lot of energy. Once you can start to pump that energy into your molecules, they will start to vibrate. If they vibrate enough, they can escape the limitations of the liquid environment and become a gas. When you reach your boiling point, the molecules in your system have enough energy to become a gas.The reverse is true if you are a gas. You need to lose some energy from your very excited gas atoms. The easy answer is to lower the surrounding temperature. When the temperature drops, energy will be transferred out of your gas atoms into the colder environment. When you reach the temperature of the condensation point, you become a liquid. If you were steam over a boiling pot of water and you hit a wall, the wall would be so cool that you would quickly become a liquid. The wall absorbed some of your extra energy. Gas to Plasma and Back to Gas
Let's finish up by imagining you're a gas like neon (Ne). You say, "Hmmmm. I'd like to become a plasma. They are too cool!" As a gas, you're already halfway there, but you still need to tear off a bunch of electrons from your atoms. Electrons have a negative charge. Eventually, you'll have groups of positively and negatively charged particles in almost equal concentrations. They wind up in a big plasma ball. When the ions are in equal amounts, the charge of the entire plasma is close to neutral. Neutral happens when a whole bunch of positive particles cancel out the charges of an equal bunch of negatively charged particles.
Plasma can be made from a gas if a lot of energy is pushed into the gas. In the case of neon, it is electrical energy that pulls the electrons off. When it comes time to become a gas again, just flip the neon light switch off. Without the electricity to energize the atoms, the neon plasma returns to its gaseous state. We have a special world here on Earth. We have an environment where you don't find a lot of everyday plasma. Once you leave the planet and travel through the Universe, you will find plasma everywhere. It's in stars and all of the space in between. More on Phase Changes from Part I... 
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