Energy of a baseball pitch in eV?

[SLD]

OK. I’ve been reading an interesting book on particle physics and they keep talking about various particle collisions at so many GeV or MeV. I keep wondering how this Compares to the energy of a macro object. A baseball weighs about 145 grams. A typical high school pitcher will probably throw about 100 km/h. Pros at 100 mph, but let’s keep it simple.

So how does this compare to the energies generated by particle collisions in the LHC at CERN?

 

[Shadowy Man]

Assuming I didn’t make any typos on input, Wolfram Alpha puts that at 3.5e20 eV.

Edited: that’s the kinetic energy (0.5 m v^2) of the values you gave.

 

[bilby]

A 145g baseball contains about 10³⁵ atoms, and at least an order of magnitude more hadrons. Putting a GeV into a single hadron (or a colliding pair of them) is a very different prospect to spreading that energy over 10³⁶ of them.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

OK. I’ve been reading an interesting book on particle physics and they keep talking about various particle collisions at so many GeV or MeV. I keep wondering how this Compares to the energy of a macro object. A baseball weighs about 145 grams. A typical high school pitcher will probably throw about 100 km/h. Pros at 100 mph, but let’s keep it simple.

So how does this compare to the energies generated by particle collisions in the LHC at CERN?

A 145g baseball contains about 10³⁵ atoms, and at least an order of magnitude more hadrons. Putting a GeV into a single hadron (or a colliding pair of them) is a very different prospect to spreading that energy over 10³⁶ of them.

Yup. While the per-particle energies of a big particle accelerator can be phenomenal the overall energy is tiny. Consider the oh-my-god particle, the most energetic particle ever detected--way, way above the energies of the LHC (which is why all the fear about bad things happening with the LHC are bunk--if it was going to happen nature would have already done it.) On our scale, let's take a penny and drop it--a half a centimeter.

 

[steve_bank]

1 joule = 6.242e18ev
1 ev = 1.6e-19j
1 watt = 1 j/s


A 1000 watt space heater running for 1 hour is 1000 watts*3600 seconds = 3.6 Mj

A 1kg mass at 1 m/s is 1kg m^2/s^2 = 1 joule per kg m^2/s^2

1 lb = .45 kg

10lb ball = 4.5kg

ke 10lb at 1 m/s = 4.5 joules

comparisons in ev
https://units.fandom.com/wiki/Electronvolt
https://home.fnal.gov/~syphers/Talks/Ask_a_ScientistApr09.pdf

 

[repoman]

Assuming I didn’t make any typos on input, Wolfram Alpha puts that at 3.5e20 eV.

Edited: that’s the kinetic energy (0.5 m v^2) of the values you gave.

from here:
https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/cgro/epo/brochures/new_win/nw16.html

EXTRAORDINARY ENERGY, RARITY: The highest energy of a detected cosmic ray is 3x1020 eV (electron volts), equivalent to about 12 calories, more than ten-million times greater than the maximum energy achievable with the largest planned particle accelerators on Earth. This recently detected event was concentrated in a single "elementary" particle, the highest energy such fundamental chunk of matter yet to be found in nature. Only seven other events with energy above about 1020 eV have been observed.

That is gram calories not food kilocalories. So 0.012 food calories.


so lines up perfectly

Wonder how much is from relativistic effects.

 

[Jarhyn]

OK. I’ve been reading an interesting book on particle physics and they keep talking about various particle collisions at so many GeV or MeV. I keep wondering how this Compares to the energy of a macro object. A baseball weighs about 145 grams. A typical high school pitcher will probably throw about 100 km/h. Pros at 100 mph, but let’s keep it simple.

So how does this compare to the energies generated by particle collisions in the LHC at CERN?

A 145g baseball contains about 10³⁵ atoms, and at least an order of magnitude more hadrons. Putting a GeV into a single hadron (or a colliding pair of them) is a very different prospect to spreading that energy over 10³⁶ of them.

Yup. While the per-particle energies of a big particle accelerator can be phenomenal the overall energy is tiny. Consider the oh-my-god particle, the most energetic particle ever detected--way, way above the energies of the LHC (which is why all the fear about bad things happening with the LHC are bunk--if it was going to happen nature would have already done it.) On our scale, let's take a penny and drop it--a half a centimeter.

I was under the impression that the OMG particle was travelling with the kinetic energy of a well struck tennis ball... The moment force, mind, that would accelerate said tennis ball from 0 to 30-40mph.

Please though disabuse me of false understanding.