A scientist discovers a stack of newspapers is burned completely to ash in his laboratory. How does the resulting mass relate to the initial mass of the stack of newspapers?(1 point)

Question

Responses

The mass of the gasses and the ash should be double the mass of the original stack of newspapers.
The mass of the gasses and the ash should be double the mass of the original stack of newspapers.

The mass of the gasses and the ash should equal the mass of the original stack of newspapers.
The mass of the gasses and the ash should equal the mass of the original stack of newspapers.

The mass of the gasses and the ash should be one-half the mass of the original stack of newspapers.
The mass of the gasses and the ash should be one-half the mass of the original stack of newspapers.

The mass of the gasses and the ash should be one-fourth the mass of the original stack of newspapers.

Answer 1

The correct response is:

The mass of the gasses and the ash should equal the mass of the original stack of newspapers.

This is based on the principle of conservation of mass, which states that in a closed system, the total mass before and after a chemical reaction should remain constant. In this case, the mass of the gases produced and the ash left after the combustion of the newspapers should equal the initial mass of the stack of newspapers, assuming no mass is lost to the surroundings.