Energy conversion
However, a change in mass of 1 gram could theoretically
produce as much as 9x1013 joules of energy.
Just how much energy is that?
Well, 1 kilowatt-hour of energy is 1000x3600 or 3.6x106 Joules.
So 9x1013 joules is 25 million kilowatt-hours.
Basically a change in mass of 1 gram would be enough to keep
the electric lamps in 1 million houses burning 7 hours per day
for about one whole week.
That’s a lot of energy. In nuclear physics we don’t commonly
use Joules for energy, it is more commonly expressed in
electron-volt (eV) .
1 eV = 1.6 x 10^-19 J.
1 Megelectronvolt = 1MeV = 1.6 x 10-13 Joules.