The conservation laws show that matter and energy can be neither produced from nothing nor reduced to nothing, whether it be through a physical reaction (such as a collision), a chemical reaction (such as combustion) or a nuclear reaction (such as an atomic explosion). The laws govern the actions of momentum, mass, energy, and subatomic particles. All of the conservation laws are based upon hundreds of years of empirical evidence and have as their authors some of the most respected scientists of all time.

The first conservation law to gain universal acceptance was the Law of Conservation of Momentum, which relates to the product of an object's mass and its velocity. This law was proposed by the English mathematician John Wallis in 1668, and was later clarified by Christiaan Huygens. Isaac Newton had already shown in his first law of motion that the momentum of a single...