Saturday, March 29, 2008

How much energy do the electrons in our body have?

KE=(1/2)(m)(v)^2 (although electrons don't have any net KE, because they are moving in circles, we won't take that into account here)

There are about 2.2320370181851 x 10^28 electrons in the human body

electrons can move up to the speed of light, but we'll say that they are about 90% there for this problem (270,000,000 m/s)

The mass of a proton is about 3.3x10^-27 Kg, and an electron is 1/1836 of this, so an electron weighs about 1.80x10^-30 Kg


So, total mass of electrons in your body is (2.232037018151x10^28)(1.8x10^-30)=.0402 Kg

So then KE=(.5)(.0402)(270,000,000)^2
So there are 1.465x10^15 Joules of energy in the atoms in your body.

To put that in perspective, lets say a 1 Kg ball was being thrown at you with this energy (square root of(1.465x10^15/.5)=54129474 m/s, which would be 54129 Km/hr and 33634.5 mph. That's quite fast.

How would you get all that energy out of the electrons in your body, though?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

it's really not that much energy, when you take into account how much energy chemical equations use up or give up. if you use it all in a few seconds, sure...but if it's over the course of even a week...meh. Besides, harnessing the power of electrons is called electricity. And you don't really want to do that to your body.