48: Conservation Laws
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There are four conserved quantities in classical physics:
- Energy
- Linear momentum
- Angular momentum
- Electric charge
Two of these (energy and electric charge) are scalar quantities; the other two (linear momentum and angular momentum) are vector quantities.
We've seen the first three of these quantities in this course. You'll meet the fourth — conservation of electric charge — in General Physics II.
In addition to these four, there are a few more esoteric conservation laws related to particle physics; but these conservation laws are beyond the scope of this course.