What would happen if all of the electrons suddenly dissappeared from the iPod I was holding in my hand?

Question

This is a hypothetical question. I would think that all of the atoms would desintegrate and turn into a finely powdered substance.. then I thought it would kind of explode since there would be heavy ionization with the nearby air resulting in release of energy and light... But initially the nucleii would be repulsed from each other. Anyway I was just curious of what would happen from a purely hypothetical perspective, and I was hoping I could get a scientific and accurate answer if it really did occur. I hope this doesn't happen to my iPod though.

Answer 1

Your guess is correct.

The weight of iPod is about 100 gram.
It therefore contains about 50 moles of protons,
or about Q= 50MegaCoulomb.

The capacitance of iPod is about r/k ~ 10pF.
The electric potential of the iPod will be
U = Q/C = 5 TeraVolt

The energy will be
E = 1/2 QU ~ 125 TeraJoules

The explosion caused by positively charged nucleii repelling each other will be about 30 kilotonnes of TNT
(about typical A-bomb)


[Edit]
lithiumdeuteride's answer is apparently correct.
I lost somehow 12 orders of magnitude

Answer 2

It would explode and kill you. And it would do MUCH more than just kill you. The electromagnetic force is extremely strong; even a very small charge imbalance (1 part in a billion) generates huge forces.

A complete and total charge imbalance would result in gigantic repulsive forces between the nuclei. They would fly apart at a significant fraction of the speed of light, dosing you with a shower of cosmic rays (high-energy charged particles) and free neutrons.

A 4.8-ounce iPod might contain 4*10^25 protons packed into a region the size of a deck of cards, giving it a potential energy configuration (in the absence of all electrons) of at LEAST 7*10^25 joules, by my rather conservative calculations. It like likely a couple orders of magnitude higher than this.

So what is 7*10^25 joules like? Well, a 1-megaton hydrogen bomb only releases about 10^15 joules, so that's far too small for comparison. The power output of the entire Sun is about 10^26 joules per second.

So, your iPod would release energy approximately equivalent to the Sun's output over 1 second, but it would do it in more like a billionth of a second. Needless to say, you'd be vaporized, along with a significant chunk of the Earth's crust.

I hope that gives you some appreciation for how much stronger the electromagnetic force is, compared to the gravitational force.

Answer 3

Haha that's a hilarious thought. Anyway... if all the electrons left your ipod of, let's say for simplicity's sake, 10 moles of iron, 26 electrons from each atom would disappear. Assuming initially neutral charge, 26 electrons / atom * 6.022E23 atoms/mole *10 moles=1.57e27 electrons!

Each electron has a charge of -1.6e-19C, so you'd have a charge of +2.51e8C. Taking a rough estimate and average of your ipod, we'll treat the charge distributed in two point charges 5 cm apart. By coulomb's law F=k q^2/r^2, so
9e9 * (1.255e8)^2 / (.05m)^2=5.67e28 Newtons.

Lets compare that force to a very large mass.
F=ma, on earth a=9.8 m/s^2
m=F/a=5.785e27kg

Earth weighs about 5.97e24kg. We're talking about a force like a weight a thousand times as massive as earth, roughly, that would repel those nuclei. Wow.

Let's say that the nuclei DID ionize the air around them. The air would then still carry that overwhelmingly positive concentration.

So if your iPod lost all its electrons suddenly, very very very bad things would happen. And you would die. :)

Answer 4

Electrons can be emitted during chemical decay,
and you are right that there is conservation of momentum.
However, who is to say if all of the electrons would
emit in the same direction. Perhaps they would cancel
each others momentum out. Substantial effort is
made to ensure that components are designed from
stable isotopes of chemical compounds. First and
foremost by selecting elements which aren't
radioactively unstable. The morale of the story
is don't undercut research and development
funding.

Answer 5

In Larry Niven's Known Space universe, a weapon that neutralized the charge of electrons in one place and protons some distance away was the most destructive WMD in existance due to the Coulomb explosion and electrical discharge.

Answer 6

Doh! That happened to me just last week at work. (I was playing with the switches that were all lit up.) We all got to go home early that day from the Nuclear plant so I went to Moe's.

Answer 7

The Universe would go out! Poof (gone)