Law of Conservation of Mass

Matter is anything that has weight and takes up space. Anything you can see and touch is
matter. Matter has three main forms: solid, liquid, and gas. It can change from one form to another. For
example, water can be boiled, which turns it into a gas. It might seem like the boiling water vanished,
but it just changed into a form we cannot see, called water vapor.

The idea that the total mass of matter remains constant is known as The Law of Conservation of Mass.
The law of conservation of mass was created in 1789 by a French scientist, Antoine Lavoisier, the father
of modern chemistry. The law states that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. It can, however,
be arranged. A reactant is the chemical reaction of two or more elements to make a new substance, and
a product is the substance formed as the result of a chemical reaction. In a chemical reaction, the mass
of the reactants must be equal to the mass of the products.

The Law is applicable to both chemical and physical changes. For example, if you have an ice cube that
melts into a liquid and you heat that liquid up, it becomes a gas. It will appear to have disappeared, but
is still there. When you bake, food seems to get larger. Expanding air bubbles caused the baked treats to
expand, but more matter was not formed. When candles are burned, they change form. It looks like the
candle wax is disappearing, but it is not. Burning a candle turns the wax into carbon dioxide and water.

Almost everything in real life is an example of the law of conservation of mass and all of the other basic
conservation laws. The law of conservation of mass is crucial to the progression of chemistry, as it not
only help scientists but every one of us understands that substances do not disappear as a result of a
reaction instead, they transform into another substance of equal mass.