The magical problem appeared again. Before that, someone in Wukong asked the question of adding a catty of salt to a catty of water. This time, water turned into a ton, and a catty of salt turned into a meal of sugar. Of course, the result was two tons. This is the simplest problem of mass conservation, because there is no chemical reaction in the whole process, so no substance escapes in the form of gas, and the final mass remains unchanged in theory.

Assuming that the sugar mentioned in the title is sucrose, we can find that the solubility of sucrose is 204 grams, and the solubility is defined as the mass of substances that can be dissolved in water at 20 degrees Celsius and the air pressure is standard atmospheric pressure 100 grams. According to this definition, that is to say, standard temperature and pressure100g of water can dissolve 204g of sucrose, then one ton of sucrose can be completely dissolved in water, and the finally obtained sugar water is not a saturated solution.

The process of dissolution of this substance is only a physical change and does not involve the change of mass. Even if there is a chemical change, the mass before and after the chemical reaction is conserved. This theory can make sense everywhere.

However, if something goes wrong during the operation, the whole system and the outside world exchange energy, even the simplest heat exchange, in a sense, the quality has changed, because according to Einstein's mass-energy equation, mass and energy are actually the same thing, and the change of energy in a system means that the quality has changed, of course, this change is minimal.

If we delve into this problem in this way, it is completely meaningless. For example, it is easy for a meal of sucrose to increase in mass, because it will absorb water from humid air, and a ton of water will also evaporate when the temperature changes. After sucrose is dissolved as a solid, the molecular movement speed is accelerated, which means that the dissolution process actually has energy changes. The microscopic significance of temperature is the intensity of thermal movement of molecules. If there is a temperature change in the dissolution process, then the quality changes as mentioned above.

But this change is very small, at least the current level of science and technology can't be measured, so in theory, 1 ton of sugar 1 ton of water results in two tons of sugar water unsaturated solution. Don't take such a problem too seriously, just look at it. It's of little practical significance!

Text/Du Ruo, image source network invasion and deletion.