ng that appends things. Another example is division, which is also a magma but isn't associative, and consequently it doesn't describe combining anything but rather <i>splitting</i> something up instead.</p></li><li><p>The <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_element">Law of Identity</a> with an <code>identity</code> element called <code>empty</code>:</p><pre><code class="ml">a • empty = a</code></pre><p>The law states that using the operation on the empty element just returns the same elemen