Electronvolt, unit for energy denoted by eV, is used for small energies.

1 electron-Volt 1 eV is defined as the amount of energy equivalent to that gained by a single unbound electron (or proton) when it is accelerated through an electrostatic potential difference of one volt, in vacuo So, a 1,5 V battery provides to each electron an energy of 1.5 eV. Or the CRT of a TV set provides ~ 20 keV.   1 eV = 1.602·10-19 Joule 1 MeV = 106 eV 1 GeV = 109 eV 1 TeV = 1012 eV

Energies at CERN .....   Linac   50 MeV (Linac4  160 MeV)   PSB    1.4  GeV   PS      25  GeV   SPS   450 GeV   LHC   7 TeV

So, each proton reaches 7 TeV energy while moving in LHC accelerator.

They would be needed 350 millions "connected" TV sets (~20 keV) to reach that energy.

Taking a 12 cm accelerator section in the TRC, we have a very special complex accelerator:

0.12 x 350·10⁶  ~ 40·10⁶ m (40000 km !).

"Our accelerator" should be placed on the Equator line.

So, is the CERN's accelerator complex so big?

We can also consider a common 1,5 V battery.

E_LHC / E_Battery = 4.7×10¹².

Taking the its 5 cm size:

4.7×10¹²×0,05  ~  2.3·10¹¹ m (230 million km!).

The average distance between the Sun and the Earth is 149 million kilometers.

We can calculate the necessary orbit to cover that length:

2.3·10¹¹ /2π

orbital radius =3.7·10¹⁰ m

So, about 100 times de Moon's orbital radius.

Definitely, LHC is not too big !!!

Mass Unit

From the equivalence between mass and energy the unit used is eV/c² and their multiples MeV/c² or GeV/c² .

(1 atomic mass unit - 1 u = 0,9315 GeV/c²)

For instance:

electron mass= 0,5110 MeV/c²

proton mass= 0,9383 GeV/c²

neutron mass= 0,9396 GeV/c²

But for shortness, using the so-called "natural units" (c = 1), it is wrtitten eV ( or MeV or GeV) only, giving for sure that who reads knows how the equivalence works.