Conservation is the preservation or efficient use of resources, or the conservation of various quantities under physical laws.
Conservation may also refer to:
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Transcription
Where does all this stuff come from? This rock? That cow? Your heart? Not the things themselves, mind you, but what they're made of: the atoms that are the fabric of all things. To answer that question, we look to the law of conservation of mass. This law says take an isolated system defined by a boundary that matter and energy cannot cross. Inside this system, mass, a.k.a. matter and energy, can neither be created nor destroyed. The universe, to the best of our knowledge, is an isolated system. But before we get to that, let's look at a much smaller and simpler one. Here we have six carbon atoms, 12 hydrogen atoms, and 18 oxygen atoms. With a little energy, our molecules can really get moving. These atoms can bond together to form familiar molecules. Here's water, and here's carbon dioxide. We can't create or destroy mass. We're stuck with what we've got, so what can we do? Ah, they have a mind of their own. Let's see. They've formed more carbon dioxide and water, six of each. Add a little energy, and we can get them to reshuffle themselves to a simple sugar, and some oxygen gas. Our atoms are all accounted for: 6 carbon, 12 hydrogen, and 18 oxygen. The energy we applied is now stored in the bonds between atoms. We can rerelease that energy by breaking that sugar back into water and carbon dioxide, and still, same atoms. Let's put a few of our atoms aside and try something a little more explosive. This here is methane, most commonly associated with cow flatulence, but also used for rocket fuel. If we add some oxygen and a little bit of energy, like you might get from a lit match, it combusts into carbon dioxide, water and even more energy. Notice our methane started with four hydrogen, and at the end we still have four hydrogen captured in two water molecules. For a grand finale, here's propane, another combustible gas. We add oxygen, light it up, and boom. More water and carbon dioxide. This time we get three CO2s because the propane molecule started with three carbon atoms, and they have nowhere else to go. There are many other reactions we can model with this small set of atoms, and the law of conservation of mass always holds true. Whatever matter and energy go into a chemical reaction are present and accounted for when it's complete. So if mass can't be created or destroyed, where did these atoms come from in the first place? Let's turn back the clock and see. Further, further, further, too far. Okay, there it is. The Big Bang. Our hydrogen formed from a high-energy soup of particles in the three minutes that followed the birth of our universe. Eventually, clusters of atoms accumulated and formed stars. Within these stars, nuclear reactions fused light elements, such as hydrogen and helium, to form heavier elements, such as carbon and oxygen. At first glance, these reactions may look like they're breaking the law because they release an astounding amount of energy, seemingly out of nowhere. However, thanks to Einstein's famous equation, we know that energy is equivalent to mass. It turns out that the total mass of the starting atoms is very slightly more than the mass of the products, and that loss of mass perfectly corresponds to the gain in energy, which radiates out from the star as light, heat and energetic particles. Eventually, this star went supernova and scattered its elements across space. Long story short, they found each other and atoms from other supernovas, formed the Earth, and 4.6 billion years later got scooped up to play their parts in our little isolated system. But they're not nearly as interesting as the atoms that came together to form you, or that cow, or this rock. And that is why, as Carl Sagan famously told us, we are all made of star stuff.
Environment and natural resources
- Nature conservation, the protection and management of the environment and natural resources
- Wetland conservation, protecting and preserving areas where water exists at or near the Earth's surface, such as swamps, marshes and bogs.
- Conservation biology, the science of protection and management of biodiversity
- Conservation movement, political, environmental, or social movement that seeks to protect natural resources, including biodiversity and habitat
- Conservation organization, an organization dedicated to protection and management of the environment or natural resources
- Wildlife conservation, the practice of protecting wild species and their habitats in order to prevent species from going extinct
- Conservation (magazine), published by the Society for Conservation Biology from 2000 to 2014
- Conservation Biology (journal), scientific journal of the Society for Conservation Biology
Physical laws
- Conservation law, principle that a particular measurable property of an isolated physical system does not change as the system evolves over time
- Conservation of energy, principle that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant over time
- Conservation of mass, principle that the mass of any closed system must remain constant over time
- Conservation of linear momentum, principle that the total momentum of a closed system is constant
- Conservation of angular momentum, principle that total angular momentum of a system is constant
- Charge conservation, principle that the total electric charge in an isolated system never changes
Land designated for conservation
- Conservation area (United Kingdom), an area considered worthy of preservation because of its architectural or historic interest
- Conservation designation, the status of an area of land in terms of conservation or protection
- Conservation district, government entities that help manage and protect land and water resources in U.S. states and insular areas
- Conservation easement, a power of an organization to constrain the exercise of rights otherwise held by a landowner to achieve certain conservation purposes
- Conservation community, a community committed to saving large parcels of land from ecological degradation
Other uses
- Conservation (psychology), learning development of logical thinking, according to Jean Piaget
- Conservation and restoration of cultural property, the conservation or restoration of cultural heritage
- Conservation and restoration of immovable cultural property
- Conservation science (cultural property), the interdisciplinary study of conservation of cultural works
See also
- All pages with titles beginning with Conservation
- All pages with titles containing Conservation
- Conservation ministry (disambiguation)
- Conservation science (disambiguation)
- Conservatism (disambiguation)
- Conserve (disambiguation)
- Conserved quantity, in mathematics, a function of dependent variables that remains constant
- Conserved sequence, similar or identical sequences of nucleic acids, proteins, protein structures, or polymeric carbohydrates
- Conversation (disambiguation)
- Preservation (disambiguation)
- Sustainable forest management
- Wildlife management, management to conserve wild species and their habitats