Conservative Force - Nonconservative Forces

Nonconservative Forces

Nonconservative forces can only arise in classical physics due to neglected degrees of freedom. For instance, friction may be treated without resorting to the use of nonconservative forces by considering the motion of individual molecules; however that means every molecule's motion must be considered rather than handling it through statistical methods. For macroscopic systems the nonconservative approximation is far easier to deal with than millions of degrees of freedom. Examples of nonconservative forces are friction and non-elastic material stress.

However, general relativity is non-conservative, as seen in the anomalous precession of Mercury's orbit. However, general relativity can be shown to conserve a stress-energy-momentum pseudotensor.