Short quick question "Are we made of energy?"

[Invictus ChiKen]

I keep hearing over and over again that everything is made of energy.

Now from my best studies I got a feeling this just isn't right from what I've read. I've always thought of energy as things like thermal, magnetic, electric, kinetic and so on.

As well as something that is produced when we do work i.e. walking, sit ups, sex, reading ect.

can someone help me out with this?

[Broomstick]

In the sense that matter can be converted to energy (which we have done) and energy can be turned into matter (at least in theory), we are "made of energy", but it's energy in the form of matter.

[Invictus ChiKen]

That's what I thought I hear from a lot of new agers stuff about how "We are made of energy and can never truly be destoryed. ect. ect."

I some how thought this sounded off as I don't consider Scientist particularly stupid. An if half of what they us being made of energy is true I'm sure someone would have exploited it.

So I wanted to double and be sure here with people that know a thing or two of Science.

[Wyrm]

It's mass that can be converted to energy, not matter itself. When the mass of a system goes down, its energy equivalent must come out in other forms. This is what happens when a muon decays into an electron. The muon is identical in every way to the electron except its mass, so when the muon decays into an electron, the defect in mass shows up as energy, manifesting as a spray of particles. However, both are properties of matter, and not equivalent to the matter itself. It's a long way from saying that particles are "made" of anything, much less energy.

Energy is a number, not a stuff. That's the dirty little secret of physics.

That's what I thought I hear from a lot of new agers stuff about how "We are made of energy and can never truly be destoryed. ect. ect."

The money we have in our bank accounts is never truly destroyed either. That doesn't mean bank accounts are eternal.

[Winston Blake]

Now from my best studies I got a feeling this just isn't right from what I've read. I've always thought of energy as things like thermal, magnetic, electric, kinetic and so on.

As well as something that is produced when we do work i.e. walking, sit ups, sex, reading ect.

If you're wondering what 'type' of energy we're 'made of', then my guess is electromagnetic and 'strong' binding energy. IIRC most of the mass of a proton or neutron is actually the mass of the binding energy required to confine their constituent quarks. By extension, our bodies are mostly 'energy'.

Another way to interpret people as being made of energy is to consider that under just the right circumstances, all the electrons, protons and neutrons in our bodies could be annihilated into photons (not 100% sure about the nucleons, all I know is that it's messy). But just being convertible to energy doesn't make us 'made of it' - a quantity of ice may have as much water as a quantity of steam, but merely knowing how much steam a block of ice is equivalent to doesn't mean that 'ice is steam'. As Wyrm was talking about, matter has mass, it's not 'matter is mass'. So while we can say how much mass-energy our bodies contain, we can't say 'we are energy'. So E=m*c^2 does not mean we are made of energy.

Since I was feeling curious I went and checked how much energy is in an 85kg person - about 1.8 gigatons.