The Collaborative International Dictionary
Conservation \Con`ser*va"tion\, n. [L. conservatio: cf. F. conservation.] The act of preserving, guarding, or protecting; the keeping (of a thing) in a safe or entire state; preservation.
A step necessary for the conservation of Protestantism.
--Hallam.
A state without the means of some change is without the
means of its conservation.
--Burke.
Conservation of areas (Astron.), the principle that the radius vector drawn from a planet to the sun sweeps over equal areas in equal times.
Conservation of energy, or Conservation of force (Mech.),
the principle that the total energy of any material system
is a quantity which can neither be increased nor
diminished by any action between the parts of the system,
though it may be transformed into any of the forms of
which energy is susceptible.
--Clerk Maxwell.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
apparently coined in French by Leibnitz in 1692; attested in English from early 18c. as conservatio virum vivarum or partially nativized versions of it. The exact phrase is attested from 1853.
WordNet
n. the fundamental principle of physics that the total energy of an isolated system is constant despite internal changes [syn: law of conservation of energy, first law of thermodynamics]
Wikipedia
In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant—it is said to be conserved over time. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it transforms from one form to another. For instance, chemical energy can be converted to kinetic energy in the explosion of a stick of dynamite.
A consequence of the law of conservation of energy is that a perpetual motion machine of the first kind cannot exist. That is to say, no system without an external energy supply can deliver an unlimited amount of energy to its surroundings.
Usage examples of "conservation of energy".
If conservation of energy holds, we expect a rise in temperature from teleporting down that cliff.
If the vehicle carries a power source of any kind, it also violates conservation of energy.
The Law of Conservation of Energy says that you can't do the job with less energy, however clever you are.
The law of conservation of energy only holds under the conditions in which general relativity is valid.
Not even the convulsions of all the dimensions could break the iron Law of the Conservation of Energy, and Rjinswand's brief journey in the plane had sufficed to carry him several hundred miles horizontally and seven thousand feet vertically.
The existence of the neutrino had been postulated by Wolfgang Pauli in 1931, in order to retain the principle of the conservation of energy, but it was not actually discovered until 1953.
They flash into a brief existence, bankrolled by borrowed mass-energy, then disappear as the law of conservation of energy reasserts itself.
Teleportation obeyed the Laws of Conservation of Energy and Conservation of Momentum.