law of conservation of matter
- noun
- /lɔː ʌv ˌkɒnsərˈveɪʃən ʌv ˈmætər/
- Specialized
:
ley de conservación de la materia
- Scientists rely on the law of conservation of matter to explain why a given amount of substance remains unchanged in a sealed container.
Examples
-
In a closed system, the law of conservation of matter ensures that no matter is lost during chemical reactions.
-
That is, technologies cannot contravene the laws of conservation of matter and energy, the laws of thermodynamics, or the physical properties of materials.
Academic text (1997) -
According to the law of conservation of matter, the mass of the reactants must equal the mass of the products in a chemical equation.
Synonyms
1
4.0
The total mass in a system that does not gain or lose matter stays the same over time
1
4.1
Matter stays the same in a closed system
1
3.9
The idea that matter cannot be created or destroyed in a closed system but only changes form
Surface Forms
Morphology
law + of + conservation + of + matter
The phrase is fully compositional: 'law' (a general rule) + 'conservation' (preservation) + 'matter' (physical substance) yields the meaning 'a rule that matter is conserved'. Its syntactic structure ('X of Y') and the constituent meanings make the concept directly derivable, and similar formulations exist cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the component words would be able to infer the meaning.
Etymology
The name law of conservation of matter comes from old chemistry experiments when scientists weighed things before and after a reaction in a closed container. They saw the amount of matter did not change, so the phrase means 'matter cannot be created or destroyed'.