SCIENTIFIC WRITING

OF
Albert Einstein

“The E = mc2 paper: “Does an object’s

inertia depend on its energy content?”
The Most Famous Equation in the World

“Does an Object's Inertia Depend on Its Energy Content?”

Contained within the three short pages of this paper was the equation that would become his
most well-known: E = mc2. To understand what this equation means, you need to know about a
few more concepts that deal with relativity theory first.

The Special Theory of Relativity noted that time and length are relative. Mass, one of the
more interesting qualities of an object, is also relative. Normally, mass is thought of as the
quantity of matter in an object. To understand Einstein's equation, we need to understand
what mass is from a physicist's point of view. Two Types of Mass

There are two ways that you can measure an object's mass:

You can measure it on a balance.

You can determine how much force (or push) is required to accelerate it.

The first method relies on gravity. You have probably used a balance if you took chemistry
in high school. Remember there are two trays. The two trays hang from a beam. The beam
is supported at the center. There is a pointer attached to the middle of the beam. The
pointer points at 0 when the masses on each tray are equal. You put the thing of unknown
mass on one tray. On the other tray, you put a bunch of calibrated or known masses until
the pointer again points to 0. The balance, or scale, works by equalizing the force of gravity
on each mass.

The second method works like this. If you compare a billiard ball with a bowling ball,
which do you think will require more force to push it? That's right: the bowling ball. It's
more massive than the smaller billiard ball. Remember Newton's equation F = ma, or force
equals mass times acceleration? Another way this equation can be expressed is F/a = m,
which means that the ratio of force to acceleration is equal to an object's mass. That's how
you can figure out the mass of any object. This mass is called the object's inertial mass.
This measurement is different from an object's gravitational mass, which comes into play
in Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Measurements to determine inertial mass involve time and distance. Why? Because the
force that you exert on the ball requires it to increase its speed, which is distance per unit
of time, such as miles per hour. Acceleration always contains two units of time, as in feet
per second per second, because the speed continues to increase in each second.
 The special relativity theory stated that time and distance vary according to the relative
speed of the observer. Inertial mass varies, too. Imagine you're on board a spaceship
(physicists love to use spaceships in these analogies because the only place that all this
makes sense is in outer space), and you have taken along your pet rhinoceros, Herman.
Relative to you, regardless of the speed at which you're traveling, Herman will always
have the same mass. This mass is called rest mass. However, if you remain on Earth and
send Herman into space by himself (poor fellow), Herman's relativistic mass will vary
from your perspective. In other words, relativistic mass varies, and rest mass is always
the same, and both are measurements of inertial mass.

Mass, length, and time are the three measurements that come into play in the special
theory of relativity. As you approach the speed of light, time slows down, and length
becomes shorter, but mass increases. Let's see what happens when we deal with observers
and objects under observation that are moving relative to each other at velocities close to
the speed of light. For example, if the relative speed of two spaceships is close to 161,363
miles per second (or about 90% the speed of light), the passengers on either ship will
observe the other ship's clock running half as fast, its hours twice as long, the ship would
appear half as long and twice its original mass. Yet inside their own ship, everything
would appear completely normal.

In the example above, and in this one, the important point to remember is that both
spaceships are moving frames of reference. The two reference frames are moving at a
constant velocity relative to each other, in a straight line, either towards or away from
each other. At the speed of light, an observer in one ship would think that the other ship
had slowed to a full stop. Furthermore, the other ship would appear to have zero length
and an infinite mass. Why an infinite mass? Because as the ship goes faster and faster, its
relativistic mass keeps increasing. The more the mass increases, the more force is required
to keep it accelerating. The speed of light can never be reached, because an infinite amount
of force would be required to move an infinite amount of mass. Of course, you and
Herman would not be aware of any changes inside the ship, other than the fact that the
universe was hurtling backward at the speed of light, time would stand still, and all the
stars would be flattened disks with infinite mass. What does all this have to do with
Einstein's famous equation? You'll see in a moment.

The Energy in Mass

Einstein's fourth paper was presented very much like his other three. It contained hardly any
math and presented a few good thought experiments. The thought experiment that dealt with his
famous equation went like this: Imagine an atom that is decaying or breaking down due to
radioactivity. Radioactivity is a natural process that occurs in some atoms, such as radium. It
occurs when an unstable nucleus or particle spits out one or more particles, whereby it transforms
itself into a stable nucleus or particle.
Einstein considered the emission of the radioactive particles and the mass of the products. In the
case of radium, an alpha particle (or helium nucleus) is emitted and the element polonium is left
over. In fact, the mass of the alpha particle and the polonium did not add up to the total rest mass
of the radium. Mass had been lost! Knowing the total energy released, E, and the missing mass,
m, Einstein came up with a simple formula.

The formula looked like this: m=E/c2

In English, this formula states that mass (m) equals energy (E) divided by the speed of light (c)
squared (2). The more familiar form of this equation is the following: E=mc2

That's all there is to it! But what does the formula mean? Essentially, what the formula says is that
all objects with mass have an equivalent amount of energy of mass, which equals the object's mass
times the square of the speed of light, which is an extremely large number. In other words, even
the smallest amount of matter contains an incredible amount of energy. If your mass is around
150 pounds, you contain enough energy of mass to power a small city for a week, if only you
could convert it.

In almost all cases, this energy is unavailable for use, which is one of the reasons why no one
discovered it before Einstein did. It couldn't be converted into other forms of energy such as heat,
electricity, or light. However, almost 40 years after E=mc2 was published, the first nuclear bomb
converted the energy of the mass of a small amount of uranium into kinetic energy,
demonstrating that it was in fact possible to convert matter into energy.

This brings us back to the relationship between the relative nature of mass and Einstein's famous
equation. The mass of a body reflects its energy content. They're basically two sides of the same
coin and are sometimes collectively referred to as mass-energy equivalence. The speed of light
squared ties energy and mass together. On the one hand, it explains that there is a huge amount
of energy in a very small amount of mass, and on the other hand, it explains why mass changes
as you approach the speed of light. If mass has energy, then energy also has mass. Four and a half
pounds of sunlight hit Earth every second!