Question

The laboratory compares the mass of the starting reactants in the final products of the combustion reaction. A technician determines the mass of a firewood in oxygen reactants before burning to be 2.72 KG. After the firewood finishes burning, the pile of cooled ash that remained had a mass of 0.095 kg. According to the law of conservation of mass, matter is neither created nor destroyed in a chemical reaction. Do the results of the technician's combustion experiment contradict the law of conservation of mass? Write a minimum of 5 sentences.

Answer 1

The technician's combustion experiment does not contradict the Law of Conservation of Mass because the missing mass is accounted for in the gaseous products, such as carbon dioxide and water vapor, that were not captured in the experiment.

Step-by-step explanation:

The results of the technician's combustion experiment do not contradict the Law of Conservation of Mass, which states that matter cannot be created or destroyed in a chemical reaction. The apparent decrease in mass from the initial 2.72 kg of firewood to the 0.095 kg of ash after burning is because the mass of the gaseous products released into the atmosphere is not accounted for.

When the wood combusts, it reacts with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, water vapor, and ash. The sum of the mass of these products will equal the mass of the original reactants, if all were collected and measured. That means the difference in mass is due to the gaseous products such as carbon dioxide and water vapor floating off into the air, which would have kept the total mass constant if they were captured.