How does the law of conservation of mass relate to the atomic theory?
1 Answer
May 30, 2015
At the atomic and nuclear scale, the law of conservation of mass strictly doesn't hold.
Mass and energy are treated as inter-convertible entities and the net value of mass-energy is conserved.
While studying nuclear physics, you should come up with plenty of examples where the inter-conversion of matter (nucleons) and energy is important.
Such observations cannot be explained in terms of the law of conservation of mass and conservation of energy.
The mass-energy equivalence is given by Einstein's most famous equation :
