ENERGY IN WATER

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 166, 31 July 1937, Page 15

ENERGY IN WATER

Billion Killowatt Hours

The day may come when material seionce will draw from a glass of water useful energy that would yield .'more than a billion kilowatt hours of euergy and endle.ss fuel from the sun, is .the opinion of Dr. Ernest O. Lawrence, University of California professor of physics and director of the ra'liation laboratory there, speaking at 'he sixty-fifth annual commeneement of Stevens Institute of Technology. "We are now on the threshold of a i ew era fraught with potentialities for the future as in the 'days of Faraday or Boentgen, the era of the atomic uucleus," he said. "One of the greatest consequences of Einstein's theory of xelativity was that matter is one form of energy. It was a logical consequenee of the theory that matter conceivably could be destroyed and converted into an equivalent form of radiant energy, heat or kinetie energy and vdce versa . . "Now that it is an established fact that matter can be converted into energy, let ns consider for a moment what this means. At the outset, one is impressed energy tied up in the form of matter. For example> a simple chlculation according to the relativity theory shows that a glass of water, if completely destroyed and converted anto useful energy, would yield more than a billion kilowatt hours —

enough euergy to supply & -city witk light and power for quite a time. "The eource of the euu'i energy ha* long been a great mystery, for there if good evidence it has been blazing at its present brilliance for a billion years and as yet there is no eign of its going out. Fuel for this almost eternal blaze could be of no ordinary sort. Astrono-t mers and physicistis now believe that conditione withdn the sun are aueh that nnclear reactions are taking place ou an extensive scale, with the destruetion of matter and conversion into' radiant energy. Thus the sun is gradually losing its mass through the ageis; slowly its >very substance is raddating into space." "Although I cannot encourage the view that some day you will be running power plants by the release of subatomic energy," he added; "that you will be using the nnclei of atoms ua fuel, I do ?wish to emphasise that the establishment of a great principle of the equivalence of mass and energy is none the less of great pracfcical importance. It is probable that in your life* time anti in mine this great principle will piay a vital role in technical developments whieh you and I at the mpment are not dreaming of,t for such has been the histoty of science."