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The Weight of an e-Book

Posted by samzenpus on from the because-he-can dept.

whoever57 writes "According to Prof Kubiatowicz from Berkeley, each time an additional book is downloaded to an e-reader, the mass of the e-reader increases. The effect doesn't really make the devices more difficult to carry: the professor calculates that 4GB of books would increase its weight by a billionth of a billionth of a gram— about the mass of a single virus or DNA molecule."

4 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. Not true at all. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    From TFA:

    Although the electrons were already present, keeping them still rather than allowing them to float around takes up extra energy – about a billionth of a microjoule per bit of data.

    No matter whether any bit is currently being used or not, it still has a value. It's not allowed to "float around".

  2. Real units? by GreennMann · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "billionth of a billionth of a gram" That is painful to read. How about scientific notation? 1*10^-18 grams Or the use of a prefix? 1 atto gram

    1. Re:Real units? by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Blame samzenpus. My submission said 1e-18.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  3. Science? by No,+I+am+Spratacus! · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This belongs in the Idle section, at best, but probably not at all on /.