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Re: Volts vs. Electron Volts



Original poster: "Rainer Schwemmer by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <rainman-at-asamnet.de>

Tl> Hi, I''ve heards a lot about Electron Volts and KeV in Tesla Coils and
other
Tl> high voltage/high energy devices (ie., particle accelerators). My
question is
Tl> how do eV and KeV differ from just plain old V and KV? And how are KeV used
Tl> when talking about TCs? Thanks,

Hi

Electron Volt is a measure for Energy especially for the kinetic
energy of accelerated particles or the energy contained in
electromagnetic waves emitted from such particles. After an Electron
passes through an electric field of 1 V it has a kinetic energy of 1
eV or 1.6*10^-19 Joule if my memeory serves me right. I gues you
already noticed why its better to use this unit if you wanna do
particle physics. It's just easier if you don't have to calculate
everything into Joule and then have to mess with those small numbers.
If we talk about eV in HV aplications then this refers to radiation
produced by decellerated electrons. ie if an electron with a certain
energy hits a massive target for example an atom it emmits a
photon with a wavelength related to the kinetic energy the e was carrying.
For teslacoils the frequency of this waves can lie in the hard x-ray
range and can be quite harmfull. Thats why you shouldn't experiment
with high vacuum electrodes and teslacoils, except you know what
you're doing :-) Those kinetic energies can only be reached in high
vacuum because the electrons would be scatterd at air molecules and
emit harmless radiation like light as in neon signs or even lower
frequencies.
Note that the mass of particles can also be given in eV or MeV this
is calculated by the e=mc^2 formula and is usefull if you want to
understand what happens if you collide two particles in an accelerator
and what products you get when you collide them with certain speeds.

Well i better stop here before this gets even more offtopic :-)

Hope this helps

ciao
  Rainer