Scientific law

Scientific laws are statements describing observed regularities in the universe or natural world. They may be either quantitative statements (including measurements) or qualitative (general characteristics). These statements must describe phenomena that are invariable, or produce the same results under a set of given conditions. These findings are then gathered using acceptable scientific standards of reproducibility and then classified as scientific laws.

It is arguable that both operational science and the concept of the scientific law are based on the beliefs of early scientists in the creation of an orderly universe by a law-giver, as noted by Jonathan Sarfati below.

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And it's vital to note that many historians, of a wide number of religious persuasions, from Christians to atheists, point out that the founders of operational science were motivated by their belief that the universe was made by a rational Creator. An orderly universe makes perfect sense only if it were made by an orderly Creator. But if atheism or polytheism were true, then there is no way to deduce from these belief systems that the universe is (or should be) orderly.

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Laws of Science

Astrophysics

• Hubble's Law: Within the Big Bang theory Recessional Velocity = Hubble's constant times distance;
• Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion (Johannes Kepler): There are three planetary motion laws set forth by Kepler and they are:

1. The orbits of the planets are ellipses, with the Sun at one focus of the ellipse.
2. The line joining the planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times as the planet travels around the ellipse.
3. The ratio of the squares of the revolutionary periods for two planets is equal to the ratio of the cubes of their semimajor axes.

• Titius-Bode Law: For every planet in the solar system, a = 0.4 + 0.3 x 2ⁿ where a = the semi-major axis and n is an increasing integer (1, 2, 3).

Biology

• Law of biogenesis: Life comes only from established life.

Black bodies

• Stefan-Boltzmann Law: the emissive power from a black body is directly proportional to the forth power of its absolute temperature;
• Wien's displacement law: there is an inverse relationship between the wavelength of the peak of the emission of a black body and its temperature.

Chemistry

• Avogadro's Law: Equal volumes of gases at the same temperature and pressure contain the same number of molecules regardless of their chemical nature and physical properties.
• Boyle's Law (Robert Boyle): In a gas, the product of pressure and volume remains constant.
• Charles's Law: In gases, Volume Temperature are directly proportional. Thus, for two cases, V1 / T1 = V2 / T2, where V1 and T1 are the initial volume and temperature of the gas, and V2 and T2 are the final volume and temperature of the gas.
• Dulong-Petit Law: The gram-atomic heat capacity (specific heat times atomic weight) of an element is a constant. There are exceptions to this law, and it is not exact.
• Fick's Law of Diffusion: The net diffusion rate of a gas across a fluid membrane is proportional to the difference in partial pressure, proportional to the area of the membrane and inversely proportional to the thickness of the membrane.
• Fourier's Law: Heat flow through a homogenous solid is directly proportional to the area, A, of the section at right angles to the direction of heat flow, and to the temperature difference along the path of heat flow.
• Graham's Law: The rate at which gases diffuse is inversely proportional to the square root of their densities.
• Henry's Law: The mass of a gas which will dissolve into a solution is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas above the solution.
• Ideal Gas Law: PV = nRT where n = number of moles, R = universal gas constant = 8.3145 J/mol K; T = temperature.

Electromagnetism

• Ampère's Law: For any closed loop path, the sum of the length elements times the magnetic field in the direction of the length element is equal to the permeability times the electric current enclosed in the loop.
• Biot-Savart Law:
• Coulomb's Law: The force between two point charges is directly proportional to the product of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
• Faraday's Law of Induction (Michael Faraday): The Electromagnetic field induced in any circuit is proportional to the rate of change of magnetic flux linked with the circuit.
• Faraday's Law of Electrolysis (Michael Faraday): The mass of a substance produced at an electrode during electrolysis is proportional to the number of moles of electrons (the quantity of electricity) transferred at that electrode.
• Gauss's Law: The total of the electric flux out of a closed surface is equal to the charge enclosed divided by the permittivity.
• Lenzs Law: The induced current produced in the conductor always flows in a direction such that it opposes the change that is producing it.
• Ohm's Law: Voltage = Current * resistance

Fluid dynamics

• Poiseuille's Law: The laminar flow rate of an incompressible fluid along a pipe is proportional to the fourth power of the pipe's radius.
• Stokes' Law: F = 6πηrv, where F is the force exerted on a sphere of radius r which is moving through a fluid of viscosity η with a relative velocity v. This holds true only in the absence of fluid turbulence.

Geology

• Law of superposition: The scientific law of superposition is an axiom that forms one of the bases of the sciences of geology, archaeology, and other fields dealing with stratigraphy. It was first put forth in the 17th century by the Danish scientist Niels Steensen.

Mechanics

• Hooke's Law: stress is directly proportional to strain.

Meteorology

• Buys-Ballot's Law: Generally speaking, wind travels counterclockwise around low pressure zones in higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and counterclockwise around low pressure zones in higher latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere.

Optics

• Beer-Lambert Law: Absorbance and concentration of an absorbing species are linearly related by the following equation A[Measured absorbance] = a(lambda)[wavelength-dependent absorptivity coefficient] * b[path length]* c[analyte concentration].
• Kirchhoff's Laws: 1) A hot solid, liquid or gas, under high pressure, gives off a continuous spectrum; 2) A hot gas under low pressure produces a bright-line or emission line spectrum. 3) A dark line or absorption line spectrum is seen when a source of a continuous spectrum is viewed behind a cool gas under pressure.
• Snell's Law: The ratio of the sine of the angle a particular kind of wave makes in one medium to the sine of the angle it makes in another medium is a constant.

Physics

• Newton's laws of motion (Isaac Newton):

1. An object will remain at a constant velocity unless acted on by an outside force;
2. An applied force is equal to the rate of change of momentum;
3. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Thermodynamics

• Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics: If two thermodynamic systems A and B are in thermal equilibrium, and B and C are also in thermal equilibrium, then A and C are in thermal equilibrium.
• 1st Law of Thermodynamics: The increase in the internal energy of a system is equal to the amount of energy added to the system by heating, minus the amount lost in the form of work done by the system on its surroundings.
• 2nd Law of Thermodynamics: The total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value.
• 3rd Law of Thermodynamics: As a system approaches absolute zero of temperature all processes cease and the entropy of the system approaches a minimum value or zero for the case of a perfect crystalline substance.

References

• Johannes Kepler: The Laws of Planetary Motion by UT Astrophysics
• Don’t Creationists Deny the Laws of Nature? by Dr. Jason Lisle for Answers in Genesis

See Also

• Scientific method
• Hypothesis
• Theory
• Golden ratio