CHEM1006 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Antoine Lavoisier
Document Summary
History of the law of the conservation of mass. The ancient greeks first proposed the idea that the total amount of matter in the universe is constant. Antoine lavoisier described the law of conservation of mass as a fundamental principle of physics in 1789. A portrait of antoine lavoisier, the scientist credited with the discovery of the law of conservation of mass. This law states that, despite chemical reactions or physical transformations, mass is conserved - that is, it cannot be created or destroyed - within an isolated system. In other words, in a chemical reaction, the mass of the products will always be equal to the mass of the reactants. This law was later amended by einstein in the law of conservation of mass-energy, which describes the fact that the total mass and energy in a system remain constant. This amendment incorporates the fact that mass and energy can be converted from one to another.
