Law of Conservation of Mass
The law of conservation of mass or Lavoisier’s law is a law that says that the mass of a closed system is constant, even if different processes occur in the system (in a closed system, the mass of a substance before and after the reaction is the same (fixed/constant)).
A commonly used statement about the law of the conservation of mass is that mass can change form but cannot be created or destroyed. In a chemical process, in a closed system, the mass of the reactants must equal the mass of the products.
The law of conservation of mass is widely used in fields such as chemistry, chemical engineering, mechanics, and fluid dynamics. Based on relativity, the conservation of mass is a statement of energy conservation. The mass of the standard particles in the system corresponds to the energy of their center of motion.
In some cases of radiation, mass is converted to energy. This occurs when an object is converted into kinetic energy/potential energy and vice versa. Because mass and energy are related, small amounts of mass are created/lost by systems in energy-accepting/receiving systems.
However, for almost any event involving a change in energy, the law of the conservation of mass can be used because the mass change is minimal.
Antoine Lavoisier formulated the law of the conservation of mass in 1789. Because of this result, he is often called the father of modern chemistry.
Mikhail Lomonosov (1748) had previously proposed a similar idea and proved it through experimentation. In the past, it was not easy to understand the conservation of mass due to the buoyancy of the Earth’s atmosphere. However, once this force was understood, the law of the conservation of mass became essential in transforming chemistry into modern chemistry.
When scientists realized that compounds never disappear when measured, they began to conduct quantitative studies of compounds’ transformations. This research led to the idea that all chemical processes and changes occur within a certain mass of each element.
History of the Law of Conservation of Mass
The law of conservation of mass was discovered in 1789 by the French scientist Antoine Lavoisier; others had proposed the idea before, but Lavoisier was the first to prove it.
At the time, most beliefs about the atomic chemistry theory still came from the ancient Greeks, and more recent ideas led to the idea that the substance in fire (“phlogiston”) was the matter.
This, the researchers say, explains why the pile of ash is lighter than whatever was burned to produce the ashes. Lavoisier heated mercury oxide and found that the chemical’s weight loss equals the mass of oxygen gas released in a chemical reaction.
Until chemists can account for the masses of hard-to-observe substances such as water vapor and trace gases, they cannot adequately test any principle of the conservation of matter, even if they suspect the validity of such laws.
However, this led Lavoisier to argue that matter must be conserved in chemical reactions, meaning that the total amount of matter on both sides of the chemical equation is the same. This means that the number of atoms in the reactants (but not necessarily the number of molecules) must be the same as that found in the products, regardless of the nature of the chemical change.
The law of conservation of mass reads, “In a closed system, the mass of the substances before the reaction is equal to the mass of the substances after the reaction.”
The Law of the Conservation of Mass Formula
In the Lavoisier’s law experiment, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier experimented with heating mercury oxide (HgO) to produce mercury metal and oxygen gas according to the following reaction or Lavoisier equation:
2HgO(l)+O2(g)→2Hg(s)+2O2(g)
Examples of Application of the Law of Conservation of Mass in Life
Burning Candle
Think of an ordinary candle with wick candles and candles. However, when the candles are used up to the fullest, it is seen that the number of candles must have been much less than before they were lit. This means that some of the wax (not all of it, as you can see with a lit candle!) has turned into a gas – namely water vapor and carbon dioxide.
Firewood
Burning wooden planks create heat energy, releasing smoke and releasing the remaining ash. The mass of the wood plank was formerly equal to the sum of the ash and smoke, the state of the wood simply changing from one form to another, but the mass of the initial materials and products remained unchanged.
Camphor
When mothballs are released, the dense mothballs instantly turn into gas. This process is called sublimation. Also, the mass of camphor in the solid and gaseous states remains unchanged.
Precipitation
If you mix soil in a glass of water and measure the units of mass, and then after some time, you measure the unit weight again, when all the dirt settles on the surface of the glass, you will see that the weight has not changed and is visible. Therefore, the amount of rainfall also follows the law of conservation of mass.
