[neilep (OP)]

Dear Sirs/Madams/Pre-Ops,

Here is a fine example of the difference between matter and anti-matter using bread related products !



 [ Invalid Attachment ]

As ewe can see, one is most definitely anti-matter !

Now then, both versions of matter have different charges don't they ?...one is positive the other is negative !....and...when they come into contact they get really upset and large it big time in an explosive kind of way   !!

What charge does the explosion have ?..is it positive ?..is there also a negative one too  ?



Help me understand the nature of an matter/antimatter explosion !

Thank ewe



Huggles and shmuggles !


Neil
Everything Matters
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[LeeE]

Crumbs - I'll be a lot more careful when making my toast in future - I guess I'm just lucky I've never produced ant-matter toast.

Ewe don't really get an explosion when matter and anti-matter meet, at least not in the same sense as a chemical explosion using 'light-the-blue-touch-paper' type explosives.  When matter and anti-matter meet they both convert to energy, in the form of photons, in the ratio described by e=mc^2.  Of course though, ewe get a lot of energy/photons for a relatively small amount of matter, so anything in the vicinity might get heated up quite a bit if it absorbs enough of that energy.

In that context, the answer is that the 'explosion' has no charge because the result is photons and photons are their own anti-particles.

Are you sure that's anti-matter toast?  It looks more like (almost) perfect black-body radiation toast to me.

[lightarrow]

Sorry if I disagree with you about the explosion. Matter-antimatter reaction is certainly an explosion, and the most powerful that we (I) know.

Neil,
About the "charge", the products of the reactions have a total charge = 0, since charge is conserved (it means that, since it were 0 before, it must be 0 even after).