Chapter 8
Conservation Laws
In physics, a conservation law is a statement which states that a particular measurable
property of an isolated physical system does not change as the system evolves. An
isolated physical system is any physical system of occurrences that are not influenced by
any other occurrences from outside of the system. In other words, whatever happens in
the system is subject only to conditions within that system. Our universe as we know it
can be considered as the ultimate physical system that we can analyse. However, smaller
systems exist all around us.
A conservation law is a mathematical identity to certain symmetry of a physical system.
Conservation laws have the broadest possible application of all laws in physics and are
thus considered by many scientists to be the most fundamental laws in nature.
There are numerous conservation laws that exist. These are listed below.
Conservation of energy
Conservation of linear momentum
Conservation of angular momentum
Conservation of electric charge
Conservation of colour charge
Conservation of probability
These laws are usually known as exact laws. This means that they are known to be true
and they have never been proved to be inexact. We will not be able to tackle all the laws
as some of them fall under courses to be covered later.
Conservation of Energy
The law of conservation of energy states that;
“the total amount of energy (including potential energy) in an isolated system remains
constant. In other words, energy can be converted from one form to another, but it
cannot be created or destroyed”
There are many forms of energy - mechanical, chemical, electrostatic, heat, nuclear. In
any isolated system, energy can be transformed from one kind to another, but the total
amount of energy is constant (conserved).
Example 1: A car battery contains chemical energy. This chemical energy is usually
converted into electrical energy to be transported through wires into a motor. The motor
then converts the electrical energy into mechanical energy to cause rotation.
Example 2: When a block slides over a rough surface, the force of friction gives rise to
the heating of both the block and the surface. As a result, mechanical energy is
transformed into heat energy, but total energy remains constant.
Conservation of Linear Momentum
The principle of conservation of momentum states that the total amount of momentum of
all the things in the universe will never change. One of the consequences of this is that
the center of mass of any system of objects will always continue with the same velocity
unless acted on by a force outside the system.
In an isolated system (one where external forces are absent) the total momentum will be
constant: this is implied by Newton's first law of motion. Newton's third law of motion,
which is also known as the law of reciprocal actions, which dictates that the forces acting
between systems are equal in magnitude, but opposite in sign, is due to the conservation
of momentum.
Since momentum is a vector quantity it has direction. Thus, when a gun is fired, although
overall movement has increased compared to before the shot was fired, the momentum of
the bullet in one direction is equal in magnitude, but opposite in sign, to the momentum
of the gun in the other direction. This explains the phenomenon of recoil when a gun fires
a bullet.
Collisions
Momentum has the special property that, in a closed system, it is always conserved, even
in collisions. Kinetic energy, on the other hand, is not conserved in collisions if they are
inelastic. Elastic and inelastic collisions are discussed briefly below. Since momentum is
conserved it can be used to calculate unknown velocities following a collision.
A common problem in physics that requires the use of this fact is the collision of two
particles. Since momentum is always conserved, the sum of the momentum before the
collision must equal the sum of the momentum after the collision:
where the subscript i signifies initial, before the collision, and f signifies final,
after the collision.
Usually, we either only know the velocities before or after a collision and would like to
also find out the opposite. Correctly solving this problem means you have to know what
kind of collision took place. There are two basic kinds of collisions, both of which
conserve momentum:
Elastic collisions conserve both momentum and kinetic energy
Inelastic collisions conserve momentum but do not conserve kinetic energy
Elastic Collisions
A collision between two pool or snooker balls is a good example of an almost totally
elastic collision. In addition to momentum being conserved when the two balls collide,
the sum of the kinetic energies of the balls before collision must equal the sum of their
kinetic energies after the collision. i.e.,
where the subscripts have the usual meanings as above.
Since the 1/2 factor is common to all the terms, it can be taken out right away.
Head-On-Collision (1 dimensional)
In the case of two objects colliding head on, we find that the final velocities of the two
objects can be calculated as below.
This can then easily be rearranged to m1u1 + m2u2 = m1v1 + m2v2
Multi Dimensional Collisions
In any other case of objects colliding in more than one dimension the velocity is split into
its axes with one axis going through the point of collision and the other axis/axes tangent
to the point of collision. The velocity components that are tangent to the point of
intersection remain the same, while the velocity through the point of collision is
calculated the same as the one dimensional case.
Inelastic Collisions
A common example of a perfectly inelastic collision is when two objects collide and then
stick together afterwards. This equation describes the conservation of momentum:
Conservation of Angular Momentum
The law of conservation of angular momentum states that;
“the angular momentum of an isolated system is conserved. It can be transferred, but it
cannot be created or destroyed”
In other words, in a closed system, angular momentum is constant.
The conservation of angular momentum is used extensively in analyzing what is called
central force motion. If the net force on some body is directed always toward some fixed
point, the center, then there is no torque on the body with respect to the center, and so the
angular momentum of the body about the center is constant. Constant angular momentum
is very useful when dealing with the orbits of planets and satellites, and also when
analyzing the Bohr model of the atom (topic in electronics course later).
Objects executing motion around a point possess angular momentum. This is an
important physical quantity because all experimental evidence indicates that angular
momentum is rigorously conserved in our Universe: it can be transferred, but it cannot be
created or destroyed. For the simple case of a small mass executing uniform circular
motion around a much larger mass (so that we can neglect the effect of the center of mass
discussed later), the amount of angular momentum takes a simple form. As the adjacent
figure illustrates the magnitude of the angular momentum in this case is L = mvr, where L
is the angular momentum, m is the mass of the small object, v is the magnitude of its
velocity, and r is the separation between the objects.
Ice Skaters and Angular Momentum
The formula L = mvr indicates one important physical consequence of angular
momentum: because it can be rearranged to give
Since L is a constant for an isolated system and m is also constant, the only changeable
parameters are v and r. As we can see, the velocity v and the separation r are inversely
correlated.
Thus, conservation of angular momentum demands that a decrease in the separation r be
accompanied by an increase in the velocity v, and vice versa. This important concept
carries over to more complicated systems. Generally, for rotating bodies, if their radii
decrease they must spin faster in order to conserve angular momentum.
The conservation of angular momentum explains why and ice skater spins faster when
her arms and legs are drawn in (folded) close to the vertical axis of rotation, and slower
when the arms are extended. Although most ice skaters do not think about it explicitly,
this method of spin control is nothing but an invocation of the law of angular momentum
conservation. By bringing part of mass of her body closer to the axis she decreases her
body's moment of inertia. As angular momentum is constant in the absence of external
torques, the angular velocity (rotational speed) of the skater has to increase.
The same phenomenon results in extremely fast spin of compact stars (like white dwarfs,
neutron stars and black holes) when they are formed out of much larger and slower
rotating stars (indeed, decreasing the size of object 104 times results in increase of its
angular velocity by the factor 108).
Central Forces
Many [maybe even most] forces in nature are directed toward [or away from] some
``source'' of the force. An obvious example is Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation,
but there are many others evident. We call these forces “central” because if we regard the
point toward [or away from] which the force points as the centre (or origin O) of our
coordinate system, and assume that it is from this point that the position vector is
drawn, the cross product between and (which is along ) is always zero. That
is,
“A central force produces no torque about the centre; therefore the angular momentum
about the centre remains constant under a central force.”
This is another statement of the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum.
