hydrogen is converted into helium is called
In the core of the Sun hydrogen is being converted into helium. This is called nuclear fusion. It takes four hydrogen atoms to fuse into each helium atom. During the process some of the mass is converted into energy. The difference between the mass of 4 H atoms and 1 He atom is 0.02862 AMU which is only 0.71% of the original mass. This small fraction of the mass is converted into energy. If 4 grams (1/8 ounce) of H are converted to He, only 2.8x10-3 grams of the mass is converted to energy: How much energy is generated from converting such a tiny amount of mass? We can calculate by using Einstein's famous formula. E = mc 2