The law of conservation of mass states that mass in an enclosed system is neither created nor destroyed

by a chemical reaction. Thus, in a chemical reaction, the mass of the reactants must be equal to the
mass of the products.

Below are the people who had contributed to the understanding of mass and its conservation.

Ancient Greek philosophers believed that ‘nothing comes from nothing’ which implied that everything in
the present had come from an origin.

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was a Persian polymath who wrote that a body of matter could not disappear
completely. It could only change its form, condition, and other properties. These changes could turn it
into a different form of matter.

Mikhail Lomonosov was a Russian writer and polymath who disproved the phlogiston theory, which
assumed that matter contained phlogiston— a fire-like substance that existed in combustible materials.
He showed in an experiment of burning metals that the mass of metals remained the same after
burning.

Antoine Lavoisier proposed the law of conservation of mass. This law states that in a chemical reaction,
the total mass of the products is always equal to the total mass of the reactants; and atoms are neither
created nor destroyed, but rearranged to form new substances.

Law of Conservation of Energy

The law of conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be
transformed from one form to another. Hence, the total energy of an isolated system never change.

Below are some of the scientists who had contributed to the development of the law of conservation of
energy.

Galileo Galilei was an Italian astronomer and physicist who studied an ‘interrupted pendulum. His
experiment showed that the energy was conserved in the pendulum causing it to swing to the same
height as it was released. If energy was not conserved, it would have stopped and have not completed
its swing. In a modern sense, he demonstrated that kinetic energy can be converted to potential energy
and vice versa.
Christian Huygens was a Dutch mathematician who published his laws of collisions. He noted that the
kinetic energies of colliding objects were the same before and after the collision.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German polymath and philosopher who used Huygen’s work on collision
to derive a mathematical formulation for energy that is related to motion (kinetic energy). It is called vis
viva which is the Latin word for ‘living force’ and represented as mv2.

Émilie du Châtelet performed experiments where she dropped a ball into soft clay at different heights.
She learned that the ball’s kinetic energy was proportional to the square of its velocity, and the
deformation on the clay was proportional to its initial potential energy. She then proposed that energy is
different from momentum.

Albert Einstein developed a theory that united the concepts of mass and energy. Einstein’s energy-mass
equivalence implies that neither mass nor energy are separately conserved, but they could be
interchanged. The total ‘mass-energy’ of the universe is conserved.

Law of Conservation of Momentum

Just as mass and energy are conserved, momentum is also conserved. The law of conservation of
momentum states that the total momentum of an object does not change (i.e it remains at rest or in
motion with constant velocity) if there are no external forces acting on it.

Below is a list of scientists who have contributed to the development of the law of conservation of
momentum.

Jean Buridan was a teacher and philosopher who first used the term ‘impetus’ to signify the notion of
momentum. According to his theory, an impetus set an object in motion, and it increases as the object’s
speed also increases.

Rene Descartes was a French philosopher and mathematician who proposed that the total ‘quantity of
motion’ of the universe is conserved and it is equal to the product of the object’s size and speed. This is
almost the same as the modern concept of conservation of momentum, however, Descartes had no
concept of mass that was different from weight and size of the object.

John Wallis was an English mathematician who suggested the law of conservation of momentum. This
law states that a body will remain at rest or in motion, unless an external force applied to it is greater
than its resistance. This statement is similar with the first law of motion of Sir Isaac Newton.
Isaac Newton was an English physicist and mathematician who defined the ‘quantity of motion’ as a
product of velocity and mass and later identified it as momentum. He implied that when no force acts
on the object, the quantity of motion is conserved.