conservation of mass (redirected from law of conservation of mass)

conservation of mass [‚kän·sər′vā·shən əv ′mas]

(physics)

The notion that mass can neither be created nor destroyed; it is violated by many microscopic phenomena.

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Conservation of mass

The notion that mass, or matter, can be neither created nor destroyed. According to conservation of mass, reactions and interactions which change the properties of substances leave unchanged their total mass; for instance, when charcoal burns, the mass of all of the products of combustion, such as ashes, soot, and gases, equals the original mass of charcoal and the oxygen with which it reacted.

The special theory of relativity of Albert Einstein, which has been verified by experiment, has shown, however, that the mass of a body changes as the energy possessed by the body changes. Such changes in mass are too small to be detected except in subatomic phenomena. Furthermore, matter may be created, for instance, by the materialization of a photon (quantum of electromagnetic energy) into an electron-positron pair; or it may be destroyed, by the annihilation of this pair of elementary particles to produce a pair of photons. See Electron-positron pair production, Relativity