Do the electrons have inertial mass?

FranciscoAlm
Messages
4
Reaction score
0
Hello there!
According to quantum physics, do the electrons have inertial mass? I read somewhere electrons were an amount of energy, with no mass at all. I think I'm confused about the concept of "mass" since I know two, the one they taught me at school, which I'm considering as inertial mass and the one on relativity that is related to energy, right?
(Sorry if I'm saying something stupid, I'm sixteen and I actually am new here and the knowledge I have about quantum physics and so on is due to my own research.)
Anyway, thanks for the help.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Hi, welcome to PF!

I read somewhere electrons were an amount of energy, with no mass at all

Isn't quite true, perhaps you're thinking of a photon? Electrons are a massive particle, with a rest mass of about 9.10938×10^-31 kg
 
Yes, they have inertial mass :)

Often is said they have no mass cause it's so small compared with neutrons and protons.

Relative mass is


mr = mi / \sqrt{1 - v²/c²}

with v = velocity, c = light of speed
As you see for low speed this is the kinda the same as inertial mass :)
 
It cannot be stressed enough that the quantity you give as "mass" is not mass in the modern sense (if you assume a scientific achievement as "modern" although it has been obtained over 100 years ago) but Energy (divided by c^2).

In relativistic physics mass means the invariant mass of an object, i.e., a scalar quantity while energy is the time component of the energy-momentum four-vector.
 
Got it! Thank you all :)
I spent some time researching the difference between the two masses and with what you said here and with what I've read, I think I understood it.
I really meant electron e.bar.goum , but since you spoke of photons, I'll do some more research about them just for the fun of learning :)
 
Insights auto threads is broken atm, so I'm manually creating these for new Insight articles. Towards the end of the first lecture for the Qiskit Global Summer School 2025, Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Olivia Lanes (Global Lead, Content and Education IBM) stated... Source: https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/quantum-entanglement-is-a-kinematic-fact-not-a-dynamical-effect/ by @RUTA
If we release an electron around a positively charged sphere, the initial state of electron is a linear combination of Hydrogen-like states. According to quantum mechanics, evolution of time would not change this initial state because the potential is time independent. However, classically we expect the electron to collide with the sphere. So, it seems that the quantum and classics predict different behaviours!
According to recent podcast between Jacob Barandes and Sean Carroll, Barandes claims that putting a sensitive qubit near one of the slits of a double slit interference experiment is sufficient to break the interference pattern. Here are his words from the official transcript: Is that true? Caveats I see: The qubit is a quantum object, so if the particle was in a superposition of up and down, the qubit can be in a superposition too. Measuring the qubit in an orthogonal direction might...

Similar threads

Back
Top