Unless you have lived in a cave your entire life, the above formula must be very familiar to you. It was formulated in the Special Theory of Relativity by the German-born American physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955).

E=mc² has to be the most famous equation of all time. Authors David Bodanis, Pete Moore (and no doubt many more) have each written entire books concerning just this one equation.
It is the name of an Internet website.
It was shown at the beginning of Twilight Zone television episodes ("A dimension of mind" - remember ?) and at the beginning of "Twilight Zone: The Movie" (1983).
E=mc² was the name of a 1996 film.
E=mc² is the title of a Mariah Carey album.
Many corporations (computers, graphics, management, etc) use this equation as part of their name.

You may have wondered what this mysterious equation is all about. It seems that knowing how to use this equation conveys intelligence.

Basically, the equation states that matter and energy are identical. If you could convert a small amount of matter completely, it would yield a tremendous amount of energy. Let's use gasoline as an example. If we burned 3 kilograms of gasoline (about 1.05 US Gallons or 3.97 liters), it would yield 140,000,000 Joules, which is a tremendous amount of energy. However, the burning of gasoline only produces a chemical change.
Now let's calculate converting those 3 kilograms of gasoline completely into energy. Finally, we will use the legendary

E=mc²
And the meaning of this equation?
The energy(e) of a mass to energy conversion equals the mass(m) that was converted multiplied by the speed of light(c) squared.
If we choose mass in kilograms and the speed of light in meters per second, then the answer will be in Joules.

The mass (from the above example) would be 3 kilograms and the speed of light(c) is 299,792,458 meter per second.
So c² = 89,875,517,800,000,000 mtr²/sec² which rounds (for purposes of this discussion) to
9 x 1016 mtr²/sec².
So, the energy equals
3 kg (mass) x 9 x 1016 mtr²/sec² (c²),
which equals 27 x 1016kg • mtr²/sec²
which equals 2.7 x 1017Joules.
This is almost 2 billion times the energy we obtained from the "ordinary" burning of 1 gallon of gasoline. (And we all know that is a huge amount of energy).

The calculator below is very easy to use. Input a number, click on the units this represents and you will be shown the amount of energy if that quantity of matter were completely converted to energy.

Mass=






Significant Figures >>>
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