+16 The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is by far the most powerful particle accelerator we have. It speeds up protons and has them collide with each other at an energy of 14 TeV. Note that if you convert 14 TeV to joules, it may not seem to be a very large energy. However, if one consider the size of the proton, which is roughly 0.84 - 0.87 fm (1 fm = 10^−15 m) in radius, then the energy density is very large. Estimate the order of magnitude of the energy density (i.e. energy per volume) of the collision.
( 1 eV = 1.602 × 10^−19 joules and 1 TeV = 1 × 10^12 eV )
The length scale of the proton is 10^−15 m , so the scale of its volume is of the order 10^−45 m3.
1) 10^20 J/m3
2) 10^10 J/m3
3) 10^38 J/m3
4) 10^2 J/m3
5) 10^50 J/m3
