system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If you trapped all the smoke and ash created by a bonfire, would the mass equal the mass of wood put into the fire?

I understand that the conservation of mass is not perfect but would the mass of all the ash and collected smoke roughly equal the mass of the wood input into the fire? Or does the heat energy created somehow account for some of the lost mass?
gpt
It would exceed the mass of the wood. Suppose that the wood was pure cellulose, which is a polymer made of units like C_6 H_10 O_5. To burn those completely into water and carbon dioxide takes something like an extra 12 atoms of oxygen per unit. The molecular weight of one cellulose unit is about 6x12+10x1+5x16=162. The twelve oxygens add 12x16=192. That's very simplified, but you get the idea. The loss of mass to heat radiated into the environment will be trivial.