My science teacher's idea

[Gautama2]

My science teacher claims that there is enough energy in a simple ink pen to power a car for 1000 years (if of course the car lasted that long). The problem is we just dont know how to use this energy. Is this feasible?

 

[dguy6789]

I cannot give you any accurate estimates on the yields, but I can confirm that there definately is a lot of unharnessed energy out there.

 

[Jeff7]

e = mc^2

Let's say 15 grams for a pen. This assumes converting the entire mass of the pen directly into energy.

e = 0.015kg * (299 792 458 m/sec)^2

1,348,132,768,105,226.46 kg-m^2/sec^2 = joules?

If I have all that right. I think that e=mc^2 is only part of the entire equation though.

374,484,320,324.27 watts?


I have no idea if any of that is even remotely accurate.

 

[CTho9305]

The watt is a unit of power, not energy. Energy is joules. A watt is a joule per second.

 

[BrownTown]

Yes, if you were to react the pen with an equivilent amount of antimatter you would have an insane amount of energy. Unfortunately all the anti-matter I've ever heard of is of in the middle of deep space, so there is no way to reach it. A more reasonable goal would be extracting the energy in deuterium in water. That would provide enough energy to fuel humanity for millions of years, and might actually be feasible in 50 years or so (NOTE: fusion power has a nearly unlimited fuel source, but extractign the energy is still expensive, so energy prices would not plummit, you jsut wouldnt have to worry about running out like oial/coal/natural gas eventually will.).

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
Yes, if you were to react the pen with an equivilent amount of antimatter you would have an insane amount of energy. Unfortunately all the anti-matter I've ever heard of is of in the middle of deep space, so there is no way to reach it. A more reasonable goal would be extracting the energy in deuterium in water. That would provide enough energy to fuel humanity for millions of years, and might actually be feasible in 50 years or so (NOTE: fusion power has a nearly unlimited fuel source, but extractign the energy is still expensive, so energy prices would not plummit, you jsut wouldnt have to worry about running out like oial/coal/natural gas eventually will.).

They can produce antimatter here on Earth, mainly in particle accelerators. It is the most expensive material on the planet. From Wikipedia:
"They point out that in 2004, the annual production of antiprotons at CERN was several picograms at a cost of $20 million. This means to produce 1 gram of antimatter, CERN would need to spend 100 million trillion dollars and run the antimatter factory for 100 billion years."

And I just found something here, at CERN's website:
"However, if you had a gram of antimatter, you could drive your car for about 100,000 years!"

Looks like your professor was wrong. A 15 gram pen should be good for 1.5M years of driving.

 

[BrownTown]

yes, i realise they produce anti-matter here, but thats jsut the point, its produced here, so you have to expend more energy to make it then it woudl release. In order to actually get a real supply of the stuff you gotta looking pretty far off.

 

[Qriz]

Yes. IF you could convert a mass into its eqivilent energy, you would get a lot of it. But that's not an easy task, is it? If we could produce antimatter in those quantities and keep it under control, time travel would (theoretically) be a snap:

The relationship between energy and mass can be modeled with the equation (yes Jeff7 there is more to it) (E=mc^2) / (the square root of the quantity of 1 minus v^2/c^2) where E is the total energy, mis the mass of the matter, c is the speed of light, and v is the relative velocity at which the matter is traveling. That might be hard to follow, so here is what it really looks like. The reason why it is usually modelled as simply E=mc^s is because the denominator is usually so close to 1. Think about it: v^2/c^2 is a relatively small number divided by the speed of light squared- a HUGE number. 1 minus that quantity will be extremely close to 1 again. And the square root of 1 is 1, so the square root of a number extremely close to 1 is 1, as far as we're concerned in the real world.

Anyway, usually the mass of an object is a positive number. This equation shows that of the mass is positive, it is impossible for the velocity of an object to be higher than the speed of light because that'd be the square root of a negative and that's impossible. However, if you have antimatter, we have an imaginary mass and therefore an imaginary numerator. For E to be real, the denominator must be imaginary too to cancel out the imaginary numerator. This means that the quantity of the denominator must be simplified to be the square root of a NEGATIVE. This shows us that the velocity cannot be LESS THAN the speed of light. And as we know, if you can beat light, you can beat time. Cool, huh?

So with large amounts of antimatter, a lot is possible. Including an endless supply of energy (as far as anyone is concerned- the Earth has a lot of mass.)

 

[TheoPetro]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
e = mc^2

Let's say 15 grams for a pen. This assumes converting the entire mass of the pen directly into energy.

e = 0.015kg * (299 792 458 m/sec)^2

1,348,132,768,105,226.46 kg-m^2/sec^2 = joules?

If I have all that right. I think that e=mc^2 is only part of the entire equation though.

374,484,320,324.27 watts?


I have no idea if any of that is even remotely accurate.

if you are observing the pen moving near c then thats not the full equation. its like E=(mc^2)/(1-u/v)^(1/2)

 

[BrownTown]

meh, who cares what the equation really is, the point is that a pen if turned to pure energy would provide an gigantic amount of energy. The point is also that this is nto possible now, and will no be possible in the forseeable future.

 

[madeupfacts]

Originally posted by: CTho9305
A watt is a joule per second.

no

 

[blackllotus]

Originally posted by: madeupfacts

Originally posted by: CTho9305
A watt is a joule per second.

no

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt

 

[BrownTown]

lol @ a guy named "madeupfacts" doing exactly that.

 

[ForumMaster]

technically if you react it with anti-matter then yes it will unleash a huge amount of energy. however, it wouldn't be feasible until we can actually produce antimatter in more efficient ways then $20 million for a few picograms. so yes your proffesor is correct.

 

[Biftheunderstudy]

Originally posted by: Qriz
Yes. IF you could convert a mass into its eqivilent energy, you would get a lot of it. But that's not an easy task, is it? If we could produce antimatter in those quantities and keep it under control, time travel would (theoretically) be a snap:

The relationship between energy and mass can be modeled with the equation (yes Jeff7 there is more to it) (E=mc^2) / (the square root of the quantity of 1 minus v^2/c^2) where E is the total energy, mis the mass of the matter, c is the speed of light, and v is the relative velocity at which the matter is traveling. That might be hard to follow, so here is what it really looks like. The reason why it is usually modelled as simply E=mc^s is because the denominator is usually so close to 1. Think about it: v^2/c^2 is a relatively small number divided by the speed of light squared- a HUGE number. 1 minus that quantity will be extremely close to 1 again. And the square root of 1 is 1, so the square root of a number extremely close to 1 is 1, as far as we're concerned in the real world.

Anyway, usually the mass of an object is a positive number. This equation shows that of the mass is positive, it is impossible for the velocity of an object to be higher than the speed of light because that'd be the square root of a negative and that's impossible. However, if you have antimatter, we have an imaginary mass and therefore an imaginary numerator. For E to be real, the denominator must be imaginary too to cancel out the imaginary numerator. This means that the quantity of the denominator must be simplified to be the square root of a NEGATIVE. This shows us that the velocity cannot be LESS THAN the speed of light. And as we know, if you can beat light, you can beat time. Cool, huh?

So with large amounts of antimatter, a lot is possible. Including an endless supply of energy (as far as anyone is concerned- the Earth has a lot of mass.)

Ack!!!?!?!?
Misinterpretation, antimatter has REAL mass, the only thing different is that is made up of the opposite charged quarks and so has the exact same properties as their counterpart except that they have and opposite charge. There is almost no antimatter in deep space or otherwise except the kind that is spontaneously created due to the uncertainty principle, the current Big Bang model explains that all of the antimatter anihilated with the matter in the universe. Eienstien was still right, NO information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light to our current understanding.

Time travel IS permitted under general relativity strangely enough, but you need a negatively curved space to do it as well as a way to warp space-time, and a theory of quantum gravity.

E=mc^2 refers to the rest mass of a piece of matter so is not an approximation, only if the object is moving do you have to add the effects of relativity and also a kinetic energy term.

It seems your teacher was mostly correct, the rest mass of the pen is enormous and probably could power a car for a VERY long time, the problem is that we have no efficient way to get the rest energy from anything let alone a pen. An ideal engine is less than 10% efficient---at best as in no friction, loss due to heat through the block anything. Even fission is very inefficient, not sure of the exact figures. Antimatter-matter reactions have nearly 100% conversion efficiency but you have to create it which costs you twice as muchas the rest energy of the particle you want to make, also you have to expend energy to contain the antimatter particle so that is doesn't anihilate with a particle when your not ready.

Antimatter is used all over the world, if you have ever heard of a PET(positron emission topograpy) scanner in hospitals use positrons(anti-electrons) to map out your brain.

 

[DrPizza]

Hmmmm.... just a thought - doesn't it take a lot of energy to produce anti-matter from matter? i.e. it takes more energy to produce the antimatter from matter than is available after an anti-matter/matter annihilation? Thus, wouldn't anti-matter simply be a method of storing energy, rather than a source of energy? It's Sunday, and I don't really want to think deeply about this; but can matter/energy be converted into anti-matter that would potentially produce more energy than is put into the process? I'm leaning toward "no." But, that's without a lot of thought put into it.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
Hmmmm.... just a thought - doesn't it take a lot of energy to produce anti-matter from matter? i.e. it takes more energy to produce the antimatter from matter than is available after an anti-matter/matter annihilation? Thus, wouldn't anti-matter simply be a method of storing energy, rather than a source of energy? It's Sunday, and I don't really want to think deeply about this; but can matter/energy be converted into anti-matter that would potentially produce more energy than is put into the process? I'm leaning toward "no." But, that's without a lot of thought put into it.

Correct. Matter/antimatter is just an energy transportation means, like gasoline is. Your first thoughts are correct. Presently, it takes a lot of energy and time to produce tiny amounts of antimatter. In any case though, it'll take at least as much energy input as what comes out.
I still think that fusion is the future for energy production on Earth. Matter/antimatter would be used more likely for space probes, or places where it's just not feasible to get reaction fuel for fusion reactors. M/AM reactors though are farther off than fusion, in part simply because we can't easily make significant quantities of antimatter.
Fusion is making progress toward becoming efficient, and the fuel is plentiful. Granted, it's not like we're going to get more energy out of deuterium than it took to make it in the first place, but that's been done already, courtesy of the energy that went into forming the solar system in the first place.