does....

Guccizillaa

Well-Known Member
does fire have weight to it? Im not talking about the wood that the fires under, im talking about the orange that comes off the wood its self. Would there be a way of finding out?
 

VLRD.Kush

Well-Known Member
"Fire is nothing more than the visible light waves resulting from the chemical combination of the oxygen in the air with a fuel and a source of ignition. Since, by the laws of matter, which says matter can neither be created or distroyed, the weigtt of the material cosumed in the fire is exactly the same as before the combustion took place. An interesting experiment is to place a small piece of combustiblr material in a jar and weight it. Light the paper or candle' put the lid on quickly, and see how much the jar and contents weight after the fire.The light given off by a fire, like sunlight, is said ti be the emission of photons, which have no mass, and therefore no weight."

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090807051557AAPKqQ9
 

SnakeByte

Active Member
Exactly, light particles do have mass.
Apparently it depends on if they are moving or not. At rest they have no mass but when gain velocity, the photons also gain mass.

I've thought about if fire has mass or not before, I'd imagine it does. Don't know how to test it though...
 

racerboy71

bud bootlegger
Exactly, light particles do have mass.
Apparently it depends on if they are moving or not. At rest they have no mass but when gain velocity, the photons also gain mass.

I've thought about if fire has mass or not before, I'd imagine it does. Don't know how to test it though...
not according to some physics site i was just reading on.. they say some people claim light photons have mass, and some claim they don't, but it's never been proven one way or the other..
 

SnakeByte

Active Member
The argument is that if photons have no mass at rest then how are they affected by gravity such as with black holes or gravitational lensing.

I think particles of light are never at rest. "At Rest" may just be one of those theoretical terms used to describe something not yet observed/observable.
Photon at rest

So visible light is always moving, and is observably pulled by gravity... They must then have some mass. No?

Edit:
Furthermore, if you take into account the weight of stars such as our Sun.
A star like ours is said to be composed of 73% hydrogen, 25% helium, and 2% other elements
There would be many variables to calculate their mass.

Not just their shear size, but the types of reactions occurring within, the elements those reactions are made of, I think velocity of rotation and revolutions as well... But isolated light mass probably has something to contribute to that overall mass.
 
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