Question

According to the law of conservation of mass, what is equal to the mass of a whole object?

Answer 1

The law of conservation of mass states that mass in an isolated system is neither created nor destroyed by chemical reactions or physical transformations. According to the law of conservation of mass, the mass of the products in a chemical reaction must equal the mass of the reactants.

Answer 2

The law of conservation of mass states that mass in an isolated system is neither created nor destroyed by chemical reactions or physical transformations.
According to the law of conservation of mass, the mass of the products in a chemical reaction must equal the mass of the reactants.
The law of conservation of mass is useful for a number of calculations and can be used to solve for unknown masses, such the amount of gas consumed or produced during a reaction.


The ancient Greeks first proposed the idea that the total amount of matter in the universe is constant. However, Antoine Lavoisier described the law of conservation of mass (or the principle of mass/matter conservation) as a fundamental principle of physics in 1789.


Antoine LavoisierA 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.