If you heat up a steel ball how much weight does it lose?

Question

Or another type of metals ?

Or other types of metals?

Answer 1

Hi. You say "weight" which implies the pull of gravity. Heating the ball in a vacuum while maintaining it's center point position distance to the Earth's center should not have any effect at all on weight. The total mass will also not change but it's density will.

Answer 2

if you heat a steel ball in air, it will likely gain weight due to oxidisation of the surface.

in a vacuum however likely it will lose weight due to outgassing.

theoretically, assuming no atoms are added or subtracted, there will still be an infinitesimal small gain as well due to the atoms moving faster and the relativistic factor will come into play since mass equals energy. unlikely however you would ever be able to measure such a teensy tiny effect directly.

also as previous posters have pointed out however there can be an *apparent* change in weight unless you are very careful of how carry out the measurement due to air density effects of hot and cold objects and so forth.

Answer 3

The weight of the additional air that it displaces.
The weight of any oil on the surface that evaporates.

This can be easily demonstrated with a balance that is accurate to a 10,000th of a gram.

(A chemlab balance)

An interesting exception to this is the metal gallium which expands on fusion (freezing) at slightly above room temperature, so you could weigh it as a liquid, and watch the weight drop as it expands on cooling, just don't put it in a glass container.

Answer 4

The mass of the object wouldnt change but as the weight of an object is determined by the mass of the object plus the gravitional pull around, a change in density would cause the object to "weigh" less.

Answer 5

It won't lose any weight because its mass won't change. However its density will change because as the metal expands the ratio of mass to volume will change.

Answer 6

it loses no weight.. only its density decreases.. that is mass per unit volume

Answer 7

you lose no wait since no mass has change
silly

Answer 8

none....................it may expand and become less dense but it will not lose any mass