Einstein – the amount of energy in 30 grams of hydrogen atoms is equivalent to burning hundreds of thousands of gallons of gasoline
Latest news, World news Thursday, March 10th, 2011
Albert Einstein is perhaps the most famous scientist of this century. One of his most well-known accomplishments is the formula E=mc². Despite its familiarity, many people don’t really understand what it means.
Albert Einstein discovered that matter and energy are really different forms of the same thing. Einstein showed us that matter can be turned into energy, and energy into matter. For example, consider a simple hydrogen atom, basically composed of a single proton. This subatomic particle has a mass of 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 001 672 kg. This is an extremely tiny mass. But in everyday quantities of matter there are a lot of atoms! For instance, in one kilogram of pure water (water is one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds), the mass of hydrogen atoms amounts to just slightly more than 111 grams, or 0.111 kg.
Einstein’s formula E=mc²., tells us the amount of energy this mass would be equivalent to, if it were all suddenly turned into energy. It says that to find the energy, you multiply the mass by the square of the speed of light, this number being 300,000,000 meters per second (a very large number):
energy (E) = 0.111 (m) x 300,000,000 x 300,000,000 (c²) = 10,000,000,000,000,000 Joules
This is an incredible amount of energy! One joule in everyday life is approximately the energy required to lift a small apple one meter straight up. Einstein’s formula E=mc² showed that the amount of energy in just 30 grams of hydrogen atoms is equivalent to burning hundreds of thousands of gallons of gasoline! If you consider all the energy in a full kilogram of water, which also contains oxygen atoms, the total energy equivalent is close to 10 million gallons of gasoline!
The only way for ALL this energy to be released is for the kilogram of water to be totally annihilated. To annihilate water must take a lot of energy? Until recently the answer, even to Einstein, was yes. According to Einstein this process involved the complete destruction of matter, and occurs only when that matter meets an equal amount of antimatter.
Recently it has been discovered that water can be annihilated using very little energy. Finely tuned radio waves can separate the covalent bonds of water and release the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Once the bond is broken free energy can be created. According to Einstein more energy can be created from the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water than from burning hundreds of thousands of gallons of gasoline.
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