Re: Does energy from burning fuel arise due to mass/energy conversion?

Hi Craig,

A decrease in mass should be associated with the decrease in energy, but I suspect that it would be far beyond the capability of any detector in the world to detect it. Let's see just what magnitude of mass decrease we're talking about.

For example:

The Gibbs standard free energy change for the conversion of Adenosine Tri-Phosphate (an energy rich biological molecule) to Adenosine Di-Phosphate and inorganic Phosphate is about 30,500 Joules/mole of material (A Joule is a unit of energy equal to kg X m^2/s^2).

By substituting 30,500 kg X m^2/s^2 into Einstein's E=mc^2, and using 3.00 X 10^8 m/s as the speed of light in a vacuum, and solving for m:

   m=30,500/[(3.00 X 10^8)^2]
   m=3.39 X 10^-13 or 0.000000000000339 kilograms

So the amount of mass lost during the reaction is about 14 orders of magnitude smaller than the mass of the reactant. There are no ways of determining mass to this level of precision that I am aware of.

So, although there would be a very tiny amount of mass lost, this is only an academic observation since there would be no way of detecting it. However, it has been an interesting line of thinking to investigate.

Thanks for the question,
Todd Holland