electron volt

[ ih-lek-tron-vohlt ]

noun

, Physics.

1. a unit of energy, equal to the energy acquired by an electron accelerating through a potential difference of one volt and equivalent to 1.602 × 10 −19 joules. : eV, ev

electron volt

1. A unit used to measure the energy of subatomic particles. One electron volt is defined as the energy needed to move an electron (which has an electric charge equal to −1) across an electric potential of one volt.

Word History and Origins

Origin of electron volt¹

First recorded in 1925–30

Example Sentences

But they still aim to boost energy levels of the particle collisions to 100 TeV, or 100 trillion electron volts, about eight times more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider’s 13TeV.

From Seattle Times

"Maybe magnetic fields are stronger than we thought, but that disagrees with other observations that show they're not strong enough to produce significant curvature at these ten-to-the-twentieth electron volt energies," said Belz.

From Science Daily

Chi-Nu focuses on "fast-neutron-induced" fission, with incident neutron energies in millions of electron volts, where there have typically been very few measurements.

From Science Daily

The neutrinos that the astronomers saw have phenomenally high energy, over a tera–electron volt each.

From Scientific American

However, striking a match produces millions of photons, but to produce one Higgs boson, we have to concentrate 125 billion electron volts into one spot, which is what they did at the LHC.

From Scientific American