Scientific Laws

Concise, typically quantitative statements of an observed regularity in nature, most often expressible as a mathematical relationship, such as Newton's laws of motion, Boyle's law, Ohm's law, the law of conservation of energy and the ideal gas law. A law describes what reliably happens under stated conditions without itself supplying the causal or mechanistic explanation for why it happens, the classical philosophy-of-science distinction between a law and a theory; the broader explanatory frameworks that account for a law's mechanism, such as the kinetic theory of gases explaining why Boyle's law holds, are filed under Theories even though that category's own live description also mentions laws in passing. Belongs here: a named regularity stated as a formula or a fixed relationship between measurable quantities, generally accepted as holding under specified conditions. Does not belong here: the explanatory theory built to account for a law's underlying mechanism, filed under Theories, and a single experiment that tested or established a law, filed under Experiments.