Matter cannot be created nor destroyed

[dcderek24]

if matter cannont be created nor destroyed? everytime a baby is born that's not matter being created.
now it may redistributed as someone said. if everything came from a single cell, wouldn't this violate the first law. isn't matter multiplying?
does this not apply with biological organisms?

NOTE: look guys I am not trying to prove the law wrong or anything I am just trying to understand. I am just learning about science. i was trapped in a church n hid from science my whole life. I am just trying to understand. don't take this question as me trying to disprove something

 

[pallidin]

Everything doesn't come from the single cell, per se.
That original cell takes in chemicals from the environment and uses those to "grow"

 

[mathman]

Biological organism eat. The food is converted into cells as needed.

 

[schip666!]

Well, foistly, matter _can_ be created and destroyed. That's how the sun produces energy for us. The total amount of energy and matter seems to be constant thanks to Einstein.

But the kind of matter-creation you are asking about, birth and death and those sorts of things, is really aggregation rather than creation. They are "just" transformations of some kinds of atomic compounds into others. How the metabolic mechanism that implements this came about is an active area of research. However no actual atoms were destroyed in the course of generating this message -- well, assuming I'm running on fossil fuels and not nuclear power anyway...

 

[fluidistic]

everytime a baby is born that's not matter being created.

Right. As they told/meant to you, the baby's matter comes mostly from what his/her mother ate during the pregnancy. So it's a way to transform oranges into babies.

 

[pallidin]

So it's a way to transform oranges into babies.

Lol. Love it. Of course, there are a myriad other chemicals necessary for this to happen.
I would highly doubt that an "orange diet" alone would be sufficient for the growth of a healthy human baby.
Still, your point is well taken!

 

[Phyisab****]

Good grief

 

[AnaShep]

This is a good question. It certainly appears that matter is created when a baby (Human or animal) is born. However, the other posters are right.

A woman's diet is used to produce the needed cells for a baby. For example: broccoli and oranges are high in calcium and thus help create bones. Butter and other fats help to create the myelin sheet in the brain. DNA is contains a variety of amino acids and the list goes on and on.

This is why it is so important a woman eat a healthy and balanced diet while pregnant. Missing nutrition wreaks havoc on a baby which is desperately trying to develop.

 

[alxm]

It's just an self-catalyzed reaction. From the chemical standpoint:

Male + female + food + oxygen --> Male + female + Baby + excrement + CO2

Or to put up an even simpler mass balance:
(Weight gained/lost) = (What goes into your body) - (what comes out of your body)