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Unit 7: Astrophysics Page 45
E. Notice how m is multiplied by
the square of a huge number! Even
a very small mass is going to have
a large amount of energy.
Common Myth about
E=mc 2
Most people don’t understand that
the E energy term means all the
energy transformations, not just
the nuclear energy.
The energy could be burning
In fact, you can have particles in a gasoline, fusion reactions (like in
substance moving faster than light. the sun), metabolizing your lunch,
An example is in water: scientists elastic energy in a stretched rubber
made high-energy subatomic band… every kind of energy stored
particles move through water in the mass is what E stands for.
faster than light was traveling.
When they did this experiment, For example, if I were to stretch a
something similar to a sonic boom rubber band and somehow weigh it
occurred, only instead of a shock in the stretched position, I would
wave, a light cone was emitted find it weighed slightly more than
called Cherenkov Radiation. in the unstretched position.
Why? How can this be? I didn’t add
The Famous Equation:
any more particles to the system –
2
E=mc
I simply stretched the rubber band.
When folks see the equation
2
E=mc , they immediately think of
relativity. In truth, this equation
was not in the original paper about
special relativity and was added
two years later as an afterthought.
This famous equation tells us how
mass and energy are related. It
basically says that an pbject with
mass m has an equivalent energy
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