Lavoisierlögmálið

Lavoisierlögmálið, also known as the law of conservation of mass, is a fundamental principle in chemistry. It states that in any closed system, the mass of the reactants before a chemical reaction must equal the mass of the products after the reaction. This means that matter cannot be created or destroyed during a chemical process, only transformed.

The law is named after Antoine Lavoisier, a French nobleman and pioneering chemist. Through meticulous experiments in the late 18th century, Lavoisier demonstrated that when substances react, the total mass of the materials involved remains constant. He famously studied combustion, showing that the mass of a burned substance plus the mass of the air it consumed was equal to the mass of the ash and the gases produced. This contradicted earlier theories like the phlogiston theory.

Lavoisierlögmálið is crucial for understanding stoichiometry, balancing chemical equations, and performing quantitative chemical analysis. It underpins the idea that chemical reactions are rearrangements of atoms, not their creation or annihilation. This principle has been experimentally verified countless times and remains a cornerstone of modern chemistry, forming the basis for many other chemical laws and theories.