conservation law

noun

Physics, Chemistry.

1. any law stating that some quantity or property remains constant during and after an interaction or process, as conservation of charge or conservation of linear momentum.

conservation law

1. Any of various principles, such as the conservation of charge and the conservation of energy, that require some measurable property of a closed system to remain constant as the system changes. Conservation laws can be directly related to principles of symmetry.

2. See also invariance Noether's theorem

Word History and Origins

Origin of conservation law¹

First recorded in 1945–50