B What ways are there for something to lose mass?

[MatNX]

How can san object lose mass? You can use Antimatter or Fission or Fusion to turn it into energy. Also, one can just cut a piece of the object off. But are there any other ways to remove matter from an object? (Feasable and theoretical)

 

[scottdave]

Burning it, some of it will go away as gas products and smoke particles. I'm not sure what you are looking for here.

 

[MatNX]

Burning it, some of it will go away as gas products and smoke particles. I'm not sure what you are looking for here.

Sure, that could work too, but I´'d add that to cutting things off. I just want to know in what ways matter could be "destroyed" or removed from an object.

 

[anorlunda]

The mass of money in my bank account keeps shrinking mysteriously. Just kidding.

 

[MatNX]

 

[Ralph Rotten]

Planets lose their atmosphere all the time. It just dribbles off in a trail behind us.
Smaller planets lose their atmo faster.
Once you get like Mars, any liquid water is immediately turned to vapor when exposed to the atmosphere, and subsequently leaked behind the planet.
Mars used to have a lot more mass.

 

[Ibix]

In relativity, mass turns out to be the energy content of a body when it is at rest divided by $c^2$. Any process by which it loses energy (light, heat radiation, heat conduction, etc) reduces its mass a tiny bit. Otherwise I think you are limited to the many and varied ways you can remove a chunk of matter.

 

[hilbert2]

Evaporation, dissolving in liquid, emitting neutrons or alpha particles...

 

[russ_watters]

Sure, that could work too, but I´'d add that to cutting things off. I just want to know in what ways matter could be "destroyed" or removed from an object.

"Remove" and "destroy" are very different things.

 

[jbriggs444]

How can an object lose mass?

Change where you draw the lines around the object.

 

[diogenesNY]

--radioactive decay
--hitting it really hard with an axe
--heat it to the point of incandescence

diogenesNY

 

[scottdave]

So if we are not talking about matter-antimatter annihilations, then everything else is just matter (mass) moving around (fission or chemical reaction or gasses escaping or "cutting some off"). If you define a system, then mass can move into the system boundary from the surroundings, or mass can leave the system and go to the surroundings.

 

[vanhees71]

A very nice and simple example from Newtonian mechanics is a rocket. It works because fuel is exhausted and due to momentum conservation. Wikipedia has a nice treatment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation