Mass
By mass-energy equivalence, the electron volt is also a unit of mass. It is common in particle physics, where mass and energy are often interchanged, to express mass in units of eV/c2, where c is the speed of light in a vacuum (from E = mc2). It is often common to simply express mass in terms of "eV" as a unit of mass, effectively using a system of natural units with c set to 1 (hence, E = m).
For example, an electron and a positron, each with a mass of 0.511 MeV/c2, can annihilate to yield 1.022 MeV of energy. The proton has a mass of 0.938 GeV/c2. In general, the masses of all hadrons are of the order of 1 GeV/c2, which makes the GeV (gigaelectronvolt) a very convenient unit of mass for particle physics:
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- 1 GeV/c2 = 1.783×10−27 kg
The atomic mass unit, 1 gram divided by Avogadro's number, is almost the mass of a hydrogen atom, which is mostly the mass of the proton. To convert to megaelectronvolts, use the formula:
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- 1 amu = 931.46 MeV/c2 = 0.93146 GeV/c2
- 1 MeV/c2 = 1.074×10−3 amu
Read more about this topic: Electronvolt
Famous quotes containing the word mass:
“Teach those Asians mass production?
Teach your grandmother egg suction.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Detachment is the prerogative of an elite; and as the dandy is the nineteenth century’s surrogate for the aristocrat in matters of culture, so Camp is the modern dandyism. Camp is the answer to the problem: how to be a dandy in the age of mass culture.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“When over Catholics the ocean rolls,
They must wait several weeks before a mass
Takes off one peck of purgatorial coals,
Because, till people know what’s come to pass,
They won’t lay out their money on the dead—
It costs three francs for every mass that’s said.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)