BELIEVE ME NOT! - - A SKEPTIC's GUIDE
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We can also take advantage of the fact that Nature supplies
electric charges in integer multiples of a fixed quantity
of charge17.11
to define some more "natural" units.
For instance, the electric charge of an electron is -e
[where e is the charge of a proton, defined in Eq. (2)].
An ELECTRON VOLT (eV) is the kinetic energy gained
by an electron [or any other particle with the same
size charge] when it is accelerated through a one volt (1 V)
electric potential. Moving a charge of 1 C
through a potential of 1 V takes 1 J of work
(and will produce 1 J of kinetic energy),
so we know immediately from Eq. (2) that
|
(17.17) |
This is not much energy if you are a toaster, but for an electron
(which is an incredibly tiny particle) it is enough to get
it up to a velocity of 419.3828 km/s, which is 0.14% of the speed
of light! Another way of looking at it is to recall that we can
express temperature in energy units using Boltzmann's constant
as a conversion factor. You can easily show for yourself that
1 eV is equivalent to a temperature of 11,604 degrees Kelvin
or about 11,331C. So in the microscopic world of electrons
the eV is a pretty convenient (or "natural") unit. But not
in the world of toasters and light bulbs. So let's get back to
"conventional" units.
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Previous: Coulombs and Volts
Jess H. Brewer -
Last modified: Mon Nov 16 17:15:46 PST 2015