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The law of conservation of mass can only be formulated in classical mechanics, in which the energy scales associated with an isolated system are much smaller than , where is the mass of a typical object in the system, measured in the frame of reference where the object is at rest, and is the speed of light.
The most fundamental concept in chemistry is the law of conservation of mass, which states that there is no detectable change in the quantity of matter during an ordinary chemical reaction. Modern physics shows that it is actually energy that is conserved, and that energy and mass are related; a concept which becomes important in nuclear chemistry.
All of the conservation laws listed above are local conservation laws. A local conservation law is expressed mathematically by a continuity equation, which states that the change in the quantity in a volume is equal to the total net "flux" of the quantity through the surface of the volume. The following sections discuss continuity equations in ...
The conservation laws may be applied to a region of the flow called a control volume. A control volume is a discrete volume in space through which fluid is assumed to flow. The integral formulations of the conservation laws are used to describe the change of mass, momentum, or energy within the control volume.
The exact conservation law used in the analysis of the system depends on the context of the problem, but all revolve around mass conservation, i.e., that matter cannot disappear or be created spontaneously. [2]: 59–62 Therefore, mass balances are used widely in engineering and environmental analyses.
The first law of thermodynamics is a version of the law of conservation of energy, adapted for thermodynamic processes. In general, the conservation law states that the total energy of an isolated system is constant; energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed.
Stoichiometry is founded on the law of conservation of mass where the total mass of the reactants equals the total mass of the products, leading to the insight that the relations among quantities of reactants and products typically form a ratio of positive integers. This means that if the amounts of the separate reactants are known, then the ...
Continuity equations are a stronger, local form of conservation laws. For example, a weak version of the law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed—i.e., the total amount of energy in the universe is fixed. This statement does not rule out the possibility that a quantity of energy could disappear ...