Question

A little confused about this. If matter or energy cannot be destroyed, what happens during an atomic or nuclear bomb? Where does all that energy go after the blast? Without science knowledge, you would assume it was used up by the explosion.

Answer 1

Yes this is absolutely true that matter and energy cannot be destroyed and they can be truly interconverted into one another.

For this the Einstein gave a mass -energy relation , where the mass lost in the relation can be computed in the form of energy :

E = mc²

Here E is the energy , m is the lost mass , and c is the speed of light.

Likewise when there is an explosion as in the case of an atomic or nuclear bomb , the energy is released into the surrounding atmosphere in the form of heat and light energy.