The law of conservation of matter says that matter can be destroyed nor crated..then how come?

Question

The law of conservation of matter says that matter can be destroyed nor crated..then how come energy is created when anergy is created when an atomic bomb explotes.E=mc2..I'm confused, can you explain this to me?

Answer 1

It's not very intuitive, but it is important to remember the equality of mass and energy.
Simply stated, mass can be converted to energy (as you indicate in your question, E=MC2) and, likewise, energy can be converted back to mass (M=E/C2).
As you can see - matter cannot be destroyed or created, it can only be converted between mass and energy.

Answer 2

It's actually the law of conservation of energy...

I'm no einstein, but the way I understand it is that the energy released in a nuclear explosion isn't "created"... It's converted from matter...

Basically, plutonium in small amounts will not explode... It's still dangerous and highly radioactive, but not explosive.

A nuclear bomb has 2 bits of plutonium (or perhaps even uranium), kept well apart from each other. Both are small enough not to explode, but combined, they will. That's basically how the nuke is detonated... both blocks are smashed together.

What happens next is that the plutonium goes through nuclear fission... The atoms are split apart and as they do so, they emit energy... Lots of it. The matter is therefore converted into energy.

E=mc2... The energy you get = the mass of the plutonium *speed of light 2

(after all, ther is no plutonium left at the end of the process)

Answer 3

The process of nuclear fusion is a very efficient way to turn matter into energy. In the equation E = mc^2, the mass of one atom(usually tritium)is multiplied by the speed of light squared.
In that sense, each tritium particle has about 34701131432 watts
of potential energy. There are also about 6,000,000 atoms per kg and a typical fusion bomb weighs a few thousand kg.
The total energy ends up being about 2082067885923933654...
in short, a lot of energy!

Answer 4

Energy is not "created". It simply changes from potential to kinetic. A LOT AND ALOT of energy is stored in the inards of an atom bomb. When the bomb is set off a chain reaction occurs which seems like it "produces energy" but actually the energy was stored in the elements within the bomb when it was created. It is just being realeased very very very very fast compared to how fast it was put in.

Answer 5

Conservation of matter was an assumption of the old atomic theory, where atoms were assumed to the be a fundamental immutable building blocks of matter. This was shown to be incorrect with the discover of nuclear reactions. The more general law of conservation of energy still holds, though, with matter identified as a form of potential energy capable of being transformed into other forms (such as radiation). Conservation of matter, nonetheless, remains a useful approximation for chemical reactions, though.

Answer 6

Some mass (matter) is converted into energy in the process, that is where the massive blast of energy comes from. Matter and energy are interchangeable.

Answer 7

The law you stated is no more valid.

As long as there is no destruction of mass, total mass in a closed system remains constant.

As long as there is no conversion of mass into energy, the total of enegy in a closed system remains constant.

If matter is destroyed or if energy is converted in to mass, the total of mass and energy in a closed system remains constant.