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e=mc2

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thermidorthelobster:
I was just emailed a question from a student asking me to tell him what e=mc2 was all about.

I explained that it says that energy and mass are two different aspects of the same thing.  So you can change energy into mass, or mass into energy;  matter is basically just concentrated energy.

Then I worked out that if the student's body mass was converted entirely into energy, it would release enough energy to power the earth's energy needs completely (transport, heat, electricity, the lot) for 3 days  :shock:

Or to put it another way, if you exploded him into pure energy, he'd release about as much energy as 20 of the world's most powerful atomic bombs.

Interesting when you look at it that way...  And probably a good reason to steer clear of neutron sources  8)

datalas:
Alternatively a good reason to use chavs to cure the worlds energy crisis :)

skip:
Considering the lack of energy and the massive density some chavs seem to exhibit perhaps they might be put to better use as control rods for our new neuclear power stations :lol:

Bulli:
hmmm, i once had a heated debate with a guy doing an astrophysics PHD and he couldnt prove it was right. My (drunken) reasoning was that nothing else in nature follows such nice rules, Beech trees for instance dont all have the same number of branches let alone leaves.
So how come the energy released is exactly the massXthe speed of light squared....seems quite strange i think Einstein was just trying to think of a nice big number and hey preston speed of light. Anyway he got very frustrated.

Therm surely there would be an awful lot more energy released as we are 70% water and each water molecule contains 2 hydrogen atoms....

thermidorthelobster:
How come it's exact?  I don't think there's an answer for that.  We don't know.  Odd isn't it?  But nonetheless it works, exactly, ie the rule has passed every test we've been able to throw at it.

It doesn't matter how many atoms we have because it's the mass that counts.  We are made up of water each containing 2 H and 1 O but the total mass in the hydrogens and oxygens isn't any more than if you look at the whole molecule.

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