Motion and energy

According to Einstein's theory of special relativity, as an electron's speed

approaches the speed of light, from an observer's point of view its relativistic
mass increases, thereby making it more and more difficult to accelerate it from
within the observer's frame of reference. The speed of an electron can approach,
but never reach, the speed of light in a vacuum, c. However, when relativistic
electrons—that is, electrons moving at a speed close to c—are injected into a
dielectric medium such as water, where the local speed of light is significantly
less than c, the electrons temporarily travel faster than light in the medium. As
they interact with the medium, they generate a faint light called Cherenkov
radiation.[126]
The plot starts at zero and curves sharply upward toward the right
Lorentz factor as a function of velocity. It starts at value 1 and goes to infinity
as v approaches c.

The effects of special relativity are based on a quantity known as the Lorentz
factor, defined as γ = 1 / 1 − v 2 / c 2 {\displaystyle \scriptstyle \gamma
=1/{\sqrt {1-{v^{2}}/{c^{2}}}}} \scriptstyle \gamma =1/{\sqrt {1-{v^{2}}/{c^{2}}}}
where v is the speed of the particle. The kinetic energy Ke of an electron moving
with velocity v is:

K e = ( γ − 1 ) m e c 2 , {\displaystyle \displaystyle K_{\mathrm {e} }=(\gamma

-1)m_{\mathrm {e} }c^{2},} \displaystyle K_{\mathrm {e} }=(\gamma -1)m_{\mathrm {e}
}c^{2},

where me is the mass of electron. For example, the Stanford linear accelerator can
accelerate an electron to roughly 51 GeV.[127] Since an electron behaves as a wave,
at a given velocity it has a characteristic de Broglie wavelength. This is given by
λe = h/p where h is the Planck constant and p is the momentum.[49] For the 51 GeV
electron above, the wavelength is about 2.4×10−17 m, small enough to explore
structures well below the size of an atomic nucleus.[128]