# How many electrons in an email? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 24, 2011, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834 "2011-08-24T00:02:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![FE3O4ENAIL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ba9def/32.png) [@FE3O4ENAIL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FE3O4ENAIL)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/1 "2011-08-24T00:02:33Z")
Someone recently said they literally had a ton of emails to go through. I thought I would ask them how they handled the one times ten to the fifty sixth power emails ( or whatever the number is). I can google the weight of an electron, but I need to know a defendable multiplier to use to quantify the number that a ton of emails would equal. Lets say an email has 100 ASCII characters. How many electrons are needed to have those characters appear on your screen? ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/2 "2011-08-24T00:12:09Z")
It would have to be measured per unit of time. ---
**Author:** ![FE3O4ENAIL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ba9def/32.png) [@FE3O4ENAIL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FE3O4ENAIL)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/3 "2011-08-24T00:15:59Z")
> [@tellyworth](#): > > It would have to be measured per unit of time. Ok, lets say the, what, 20 or 30 seconds it takes to read the short email. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/4 "2011-08-24T00:17:19Z")
It’s impossible to say. Too much depends on the transmission medium. ---
**Author:** ![FE3O4ENAIL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ba9def/32.png) [@FE3O4ENAIL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FE3O4ENAIL)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/5 "2011-08-24T00:24:37Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > It’s impossible to say. Too much depends on the transmission medium. Like we say at work, nothing is impossible if you don’t have to do it. So give me a range. ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/6 "2011-08-24T00:35:24Z")
Well let’s ignore transmission entirely and just consider the computer used to read the email. My laptop power supply is 4.6A at 18.5V. If we say, arbitrarily, that it takes 1A to keep the email visible on the screen for me to read, that means an electric charge equivalent to 6.2415 × 10^18 electrons per second. (Note: I’m in software and this is a hardware problem, so I may well have something quite wrong here) That said, it’s misleading to say that displaying an email uses electrons, or that the email is made up of them. And of course we’re ignoring transmission, writing, storage etc. ---
**Author:** ![FE3O4ENAIL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ba9def/32.png) [@FE3O4ENAIL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FE3O4ENAIL)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/7 "2011-08-24T00:44:02Z")
> [@tellyworth](#): > > Well let’s ignore transmission entirely and just consider the computer used to read the email. > > My laptop power supply is 4.6A at 18.5V. If we say, arbitrarily, that it takes 1A to keep the email visible on the screen for me to read, that means an electric charge equivalent to 6.2415 × 10^18 electrons per second. (Note: I’m in software and this is a hardware problem, so I may well have something quite wrong here) > > That said, it’s misleading to say that displaying an email uses electrons, or that the email is made up of them. And of course we’re ignoring transmission, writing, storage etc. Ok, that’s why I am here, to get a better method to define the number of emails that would weigh a ton ( and lets go with a 2000 lb ton here, not a long ton).😃 ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/8 "2011-08-24T00:51:09Z")
You can use weight in CO2 emissions instead of electrons. A 2009 [study](http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GlobalWarming/story?id=7343518&page=1) on the electricity consumed by an estimated 62 trillion junk emails sent in 2009 concluded that the energy use of handling those emails amounted to 17 million metric tons of CO2 emissions. So you could say “I have a ton of CO2 waiting in my inbox”. This figure was based on their estimate that it costs the average email user 3 seconds of computer time per junk mail - to read, or delete, or sort, or dig through to find real messages, etc. > [@](#): > > Spam-related emissions for all e-mail users around the world in 2008 totaled 17 million metric tons of CO2, according to ICF International, the consulting firm that partnered with McAfee on the study. That’s .2 percent of the total global emissions. ---
**Author:** ![Re\_De\_SynchroniCity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Re\_De\_SynchroniCity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Re_De_SynchroniCity)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/9 "2011-08-24T01:12:56Z")
According to a couple of world known cosmologists Michael Turner and Rocky Kolb of Fermilab and University of Chicago, on a major radio academic radio talk show, Extension 720 AM chicago, Dr. Milton Rosenberg, host, the Hubble Telescope shows space being created faster than the velocity of light. Email replies from each confirmed that they indeed say just that but that it does not contradict Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity because in relativity we are talking relative two objects. Which also, in my mind begs the question, could ‘space’ already be a ‘holding place’ similar to cyberspace more like the blur of countless buzzing mosquitos dancing between synchronicity and randomness? So that from our vanity point we can measure ‘slices’ of ‘before’ and ‘after’ as our present simultaneously, a complimentary system of opposites (Heraclitus and Zeno). A state of ‘becoming’ that can be measured as the ‘fastest’ zips? I guess it might be a PEANO snapshot, which then can be zoomed further into details of ‘smaller’ segments of the film strip universe. If that is so, we should be able to create things out of nothing. So that ‘memory’ in an email is stored like wavicles with nodes in a continuity providing the same amount of electrons as if it was not sent. It is an ‘economic system’, better known as a cabanban system, which means the best of all systems. Admittedly there is some ‘reshuffling’ of time, through mishaps or typing errors, but the same amount of electrons simply made it through an accordian of time stamps. However! And this is important, the electrons involved may be from different orbits and thereby the stableness or lopsideness of the email may complete the cycle or not. The ‘cycle’ being a mental thought into the physical marks, the email so that it is communicated in a way that it can ‘get the point’ across to get those ‘nods of agreement’. The amount of electrons, are the physical measurements, but what’s also significant is the propensity of the imaginary process the ‘oomph’, the Will and the act encapsulated to ‘capture’ and ‘flow’ with all the electrons that are already there for the asking. Yeah, we got move with the electrons, they don’t care, they is neutral. They are non local for your local use. RE RE ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/10 "2011-08-24T01:28:21Z")
Huh? ---
**Author:** ![AT116](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/49beb7/32.png) [@AT116](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AT116)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/11 "2011-08-24T01:38:34Z")
173 ---
**Author:** ![ZenBeam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3ab097/32.png) [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/12 "2011-08-24T01:59:01Z")
Much of internet traffic is transmitted over fiber optic, and what’s being transmitted is light. So arguably, zero electrons are “in” and email during transmission. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/13 "2011-08-24T02:01:31Z")
Oh, I figured it out in my head pretty quick … but do you want metric or imperial? ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/14 "2011-08-24T02:23:10Z")
For starters, since you don’t read or receive them all at once, perhaps going after the storage space is better. That, of course, becomes very dependent on the storage device the mail is stored on. Now, if you use a PC client, you COULD relate the email to how many bytes of storage it requires. At that point, we could enter some futile discussion about how much the actual magnetized surface of the disk platter weighs, but instead, let just say that represents some portion of the capacity of a typical PC disk drive, say a terrabyte or so. Then, you can get a figure for how many typical PC drives are contained in a ton, and figure out how much email that represents. ---
**Author:** ![Jamicat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c67d28/32.png) [@Jamicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jamicat)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/15 "2011-08-24T03:23:38Z")
Is this African or European email? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Triskadecamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/16 "2011-08-24T04:09:35Z")
Mostly you are just shaking the electrons back and forth. You don’t really “send” them anywhere. However, a while they are in your computer memory, you do charge up some static memory for every bit stored, and the increase in charge does have more energy, although I have no idea how much. But, according to the Straight Dope Really Smart People, all that energy is mass. So, if you had a really really big computer, with a whole lot of memory, you actually could have a ton of email. I doubt that computer could fit on Earth, though. I think flash memory, and disk memory would also have an increase in mass for the magnetized bits, over the unmagnetized bits as well. Not sure what the proportions would be, though. I don’t think a CD would have even theoretical mass increase for having your email on it, although I can’t be absolutely sure. Is information equivalent to energy? Tris ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/17 "2011-08-24T07:43:16Z")
Ok, a conventional D-RAM cell requires ~100000 electrons to store a “1” bit. (Yano et al., 1999, I can’t find the actual published source, sorry) From here (2003 figures), we find > [@](#): > > About 31 billion emails are sent daily, on the Internet and elsewhere, a figure which is expected to double by 2006 (source: > International Data Corporation (IDC). The **average email is about 59 kilobytes in size** , thus the annual flow of emails worldwide is 667,585 > terabytes. > School of Information Management, Berkeley: How Much Information? 2003 > [http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/execsum.htm#summary](http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/execsum.htm#summary) So, using a 50% **1** to **0** bit ratio (it is a guess, but it will do given that there are attachments involved to get the email size that big), we get 59000 (average email size) \* 8 (bits per byte) \* .5 (50% are **1** s) \*10[sup]5[/sup] (number of electrons) = 23.6 x 10[sup]9[/sup] electrons per email or 2.15 x 10[sup]-20[/sup]kg So a metric tonne of emails would be 5 x 10[sup]22[/sup] average emails. Si ---
**Author:** ![Khendrask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3e96dc/32.png) [@Khendrask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khendrask)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/18 "2011-08-24T08:21:51Z")
If by ‘used’, you mean ‘used up’, the answer is zero. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/19 "2011-08-24T12:51:39Z")
> [@ZenBeam](#): > > Much of internet traffic is transmitted over fiber optic, and what’s being transmitted is light. So arguably, zero electrons are “in” and email during transmission. Except electrons are required to power the hardware that generates and modulates those photons. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834/20 "2011-08-24T13:57:38Z")
This question is a lot like asking how many tons of road surface are used to make a car trip. You travel along the road (a little like the bits in an email travel about the net) but the actual trip itself doesn’t weight anything. You can ask about the cumulative weight of the roads used to make a trip, but it becomes nearly a meaningless number at that point. An email message might make use of electrons but it is not composed itself of electrons. Also, 100 ASCII characters doesn’t mean a lot. Your screen resolution, monitor size, and font size used to display the email will affect the number of pixels used to display any message. Even in an email, those electrons aren’t ‘used up’. They go on, free to pursue lives of religious fulfillment. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-electrons-in-an-email/593834.md?page=2)