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The Law of Conservation of Energy basically states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can change its form.
The Law of Conservation of Matter (or Conservation of Mass, the terms are used interchangeably) states that:
In a chemical reaction, the sum of the mass of the reactants equals the sum of the mass of the products.
Another formulation of the Law is expressed as stoichometric balance, that is:
The number of atoms of a particular species in the reactants must equal the number of those atoms in the products.
The Law of Conservation of Matter breaks down for nuclear processes, where the equivalence of matter and energy, and hence conservation of energy, applies.
Law of Conservation of Matter: During an ordinary chemical change, there is no detectable increase or decrease in the quantity of matter.
The total quantity of matter and energy available in the universe is a fixed amount and never any more or less.
An Exception to the Law of Conservation of Matter Modern nuclear chemistry has been successful in proving that in certain situations (a nuclear reaction, for example), matter can in fact be lost in the sense that the quantity of all matter remaining in the universe is less than what it was prior to the reaction taking place. This idea can best be summarized by the equation einstein
s equation e=mc^2, meaning that the total energy gained by a loss of m matter is the product of m and the universal constant c, aka the speed of light or 3x10^8 m/s.
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