Official: Kindles get heavier as you add e-books

Don't worry, you won't notice

Download an e-book and your reader gets (microscopically) heavier.

So says University of California at Berkeley boffin John Kubiatowicz in the pages of the New York Times.

His argument: that energy is bound in the process of storing the book's bits in the reader's Flash memory and, according to Einstein's most famous equation - that's E=MC², humanities graduates - this means that the gadget gains an equivalent amount of mass.

iPad lovers know this already: a loaded Apple fondleslab's ability to distort space-time, ie. reality.

It's all to do with binding electrons which is, of course, why so little mass is added: 10^-18g.

Since that amount is, as Kubiatowicz admits, "effectively unmeasurable", you have to wonder what the fuss is about, but that's physicists for you - an erstwhile physicist* writes.

The best thing to do, then, is not read your Kindle on the train, as the conveyance's velocity will only make it even heavier. And thicker.

The quid pro quo, of course, is that everything will take less time to read. ®

*just shit at the maths, alas