Uncountable nouns are those that cannot be counted because they are perceived as whole and cannot be divided into parts. Examples of uncountable nouns are atmosphere, gas, intelligence, water, sand and chlorophyll. Therefore, they are always used with verbs in their singular form. Look at the examples below:

• The atmosphere consists of different gases. 
• The furniture is expensive.
• Water exists even in the driest places in the world.

Although uncountable nouns refer to undifferentiated mass, we could add partitives or phrasal quantifiers to particularize the uncountable nouns they precede. Examples of partitives are such as glass, cubes, grains, drops and box.

Examples:      

Two glasses of hazardous liquid
Five drops of acid
Three cubes of ice
A box of sand

As you notice, it is much easier to refer to and measure uncountable nouns with partitives. They give us an idea of the amount or quantity of the nouns as we cannot count them as we do with countable nouns.

Nevertheless, even with countable nouns, we sometimes do not count them but refer to them as a whole or one unit. When we do so, we use collective nouns.

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