If I sealed a plant in a glass ball with soil and nutrients would the plant gain and lose mass while it grows. The only external element would be the sun.
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The plant would gain mass as it grows, but your sealed container would not.
What the plant uses for growth is the nutrients in the available soil and air. If you weighed your container when you planted the seed and then weighed it again after the plant was fully grown, it should weigh the same, because the total mass inside the container never changed.
Remove the plant from the container though, and it will weigh more than the seed you planted. And the soil will weigh less than it did when you placed it in the container. The mass that was lost in the soil went into the growth of the plant.
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