Showing posts with label energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label energy. Show all posts

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?