What is an electron volt?

         

           An electron volt, or eV for short, is a measure of energy. It is quite a small amount of energy similar to the amount of energy possessed by a single photon of light. Other forms of radiation have much more energy. On this web-site energies are often quoted in scientific notation. For example 10⁶ eV (electron volts) is equal to 1,000,000 eV. i.e. 1 with 6 zeroes after it. In another example 3x10⁹ eV would be equal to 3 with 9 zeroes after it or 3,000,000,000 electron volts.

  Here are some examples of radiation of different energies.

Radiation	Energy
Photon of light Can be detected by your eye	1 eV
Ultra Violet ray from sun Enough to burn your skin	10 eV
X-Ray Can pass right through your body	1000 eV = 1 keV
Gamma ray detected by the Whipple group's telescope	1012 eV = 1 TeV
Cosmic Ray detected by the SPASE-2 experiment	1015 eV = 1 PeV
Cosmic Ray detected by the planned Pierre Auger Observatory	1020 eV = 100 EeV
Highest energy Cosmic Ray ever recorded	3x1020 eV This is the amount of energy that you would feel if you dropped a bowling ball on your foot from a height of 1 metre!

               We have some other shorthand notation for electron volt described below.

Energy	Shorthand
103 eV = 1,000 eV	Kev = Kilo electron volt
106 eV = 1,000,000 eV	MeV = Mega electron volt
109 eV = 1,000,000,000 eV	GeV =Giga electron volt
1012 eV = 1,000,000,000,000 eV	TeV = Terra electron volt
1015 eV = 1,000,000,000,000,000 eV	PeV = Peta electron volt
1018 eV = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 eV	EeV = Exa electron volt
1021 eV = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 eV	ZeV = Zeta electron volt

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