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Science

Keeping Track of Your Subatomic Particles 30

Posted by michael from the where-did-I-put-that-quark dept.
Mike Siekkinen writes "For those that have ever wondered how many different subatomic particles are currently classified, here is your answer. It provides a well organized Flash chart of fundamental particles and interactions, as well as printable JPEGs and PDFs. Now you can keep your fermions and your bosons straight. The site also has another chart depicting the history of the universe, highlighting the evolution of the subatomic world."
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Keeping Track of Your Subatomic Particles More

Keeping Track of Your Subatomic Particles

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  • They're missing one subatomic particle (Score:5, Funny)

    by product byproduct ( 628318 ) on Monday December 09, 2002 @09:33AM (#4843223)
    CmdrTaco's brain.

  • Invert the colors (Score:3, Informative)

    by ballpoint ( 192660 ) on Monday December 09, 2002 @09:56AM (#4843310)
    before printing the images on an inkjet or color laser printer with gimp or Photoshop. You can also experiment with the Hue value to tune the colors to your liking.

    If you intend to have this rendered on photo paper using an on-line printing service the black background makes for a nice poster though.

    • I agree. What is interesting is that this is usually the type of thing you see when the artist/author is color blind. Though this is probably the best summary I've seen of these particles, some hue adjustmet seems to be called for... =)
    • If you intend to have this rendered on photo paper using an on-line printing service the black background makes for a nice poster though.

      Do you have any recommendations for who to use to do this? Do I have to convert to an EPS file (I had to do this for my business cards). Any idea how much it costs?

  • An Obvious GLARING Omission... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tsar ( 536185 ) on Monday December 09, 2002 @11:26AM (#4843825) Homepage Journal

    From The Jargon File [tuxedo.org]:

    bogon /boh'gon/ n.

    [very common; by analogy with proton/electron/neutron, but doubtless reinforced after 1980 by the similarity to Douglas Adams's `Vogons'; see the Bibliography [tuxedo.org] in Appendix C and note that Arthur Dent actually mispronounces `Vogons' as `Bogons' at one point] 1. The elementary particle of bogosity (see quantum bogodynamics [tuxedo.org] ). For instance, "the Ethernet is emitting bogons again" means that it is broken or acting in an erratic or bogus fashion. 2. A query packet sent from a TCP/IP domain resolver to a root server, having the reply bit set instead of the query bit. 3. Any bogus or incorrectly formed packet sent on a network. 4. By synecdoche, used to refer to any bogus thing, as in "I'd like to go to lunch with you but I've got to go to the weekly staff bogon". 5. A person who is bogus or who says bogus things. This was historically the original usage, but has been overtaken by its derivative senses 1-4. See also bogosity [tuxedo.org] , bogus [tuxedo.org] ; compare psyton [tuxedo.org] , fat electrons [tuxedo.org] , magic smoke [tuxedo.org] .

    The bogon has become the type case for a whole bestiary of nonce particle names, including the `clutron' or `cluon' (indivisible particle of cluefulness, obviously the antiparticle of the bogon) and the futon (elementary particle of randomness [tuxedo.org] , or sometimes of lameness). These are not so much live usages in themselves as examples of a live meta-usage: that is, it has become a standard joke or linguistic maneuver to "explain" otherwise mysterious circumstances by inventing nonce particle names. And these imply nonce particle theories, with all their dignity or lack thereof (we might note parenthetically that this is a generalization from "(bogus particle) theories" to "bogus (particle theories)"!). Perhaps such particles are the modern-day equivalents of trolls and wood-nymphs as standard starting-points around which to construct explanatory myths. Of course, playing on an existing word (as in the `futon') yields additional flavor. Compare magic smoke [tuxedo.org] .

    Note: This is a static quote from The Jargon File [tuxedo.org] version 4.3.3, which is lovingly maintained by our own [slashdot.org] Eric S. Raymond [tuxedo.org]. If you are reading this post long after its freshness date, please refer to the original entry [tuxedo.org].

    • You have forgotten to mention the futon, the elementary force carrier for futility. Some people are futon emitters; things break down when they're around.

      Net futon absorbers just get depressed.

    • I forgot to include my list of bogus Slashdot particles:
      • Modon - elementary particle of moderation, classified as one of several flavors based on its mass and spin.
      • Karmon/Antikarmon - elementary particles of karma, created in the energetic collision of a modon with its target.
      • Submiton - elementary particle of story submission. An editor bogon struck by an energetic submiton will occasionally release a facton.
      • Facton - one of a class of particles of information, consisting of origons and dupons. A story is a macroscopic mass of factons.
      • Origon - elementary particle of originality. As the Slashdot universe expands, the total mass of origons remains constant.
      • Anti-origon (Dupon) - elementary particle of nonoriginality. Origons and dupons cannot exist in close proximity. Observed increases in dupon frequency indicate that Slashdot's core is far more dense than previously thought, and may cause the Slashdot universe to eventually collapse rather than expand indefinitely.
      • Penguon - elementary particle of Linux. Very stable.
      • Redmon - elementary particle of Windows. Unstable, but incredibly massive.
      Any others?

  • Mesons, bug or understanding? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Monday December 09, 2002 @12:41PM (#4844318) Homepage Journal
    According to the table, the pion and rho mesons both seem to be built out of an up and an anti-down. Both have a charge of +1, but the masses and spins are different.

    To answer my own question, a quick google shows:
    http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase /particl es/meson2.html

    The quick answer - The rho meson is an excited pion.

    After a quick look, the hyperphysics web site looks quite interesting. This is the starter link:
    http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hphys. html
    • One thing not obvious in the chart is that quarks have not actually been observed yet. This is extremely odd, as any particle with a charge of 0x1 or -1x0 should stand out incredibly well among all of the other particles. The quark model happens to be very convenient, and it accuratly models everything we know about the other subatomic particles; but it has never been experimentally observed.
      • bah, stupid html ate my "less thans" in between 0, x and 1 as well as for the other one.

        the 2 minute limit is stupid
      • The quark model says that free single quarks cannot exist, so the fact that they've never been observed doesn't really have anything to do with the validity of the quark model.

        On a similar note, they don't mention the graviton. I would rate the quark and the graviton the same on the six-pack scale of believability: I'm willing to bet a six-pack that either one exists.

  • the high-res versions that are offered here are great. i have access to a huge hp designjet [hp.com], and plan on printing these out for office wall art. does anyone know of other sites that offer similarly good, free, printer-quality sciency images?
  • "For those that have ever wondered how many different subatomic particles are currently classified, here is your answer"

    Sadly, I have actually wondered this before, and I have wanted a list.

    I don't know whether to thank Slashdot for this list, or if this list shows I need to not be such a geek. =)

  • Classified particles (Score:3, Funny)

    by SeanAhern ( 25764 ) on Monday December 09, 2002 @05:50PM (#4847085) Journal
    For those that have ever wondered how many different subatomic particles are currently classified...

    I think it must be an artifact of where I work, but my first thought was that subatomic particles aren't classified. Heck, they're freely available for the general public to use!

    If they were classified, would they be Secret Restricted Data? Confidential National Security Information? For Official Use Only? :-)

  • A bigger list (Score:3, Informative)

    by helix400 ( 558178 ) on Monday December 09, 2002 @07:10PM (#4848272) Journal
    Here's a bigger list. This just shows how some of these fundamental particles can combine to make other subatomic particles. I'm still looking for a full, complete list. When you go to this site that the slashdot article mentions, and you click on "Mesons", it'll say "there are about 140 types of mesons". Dangit! I want a list of those!...Baryons too =)

    http://members.aol.com/cclinker/subatom.htm [aol.com]

    Unfortunately, its text based, so you don't get to see the symbols and pictures and what not...but hey, its a bigger list!

    • The most complete listing I have seen is in the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. My copy is a little out dated, but it lists a lot of mesons and baryons. Most of the are just different energies of the same particle, but it gives the decays, etc. of each. I always find the definition of a "type of particle" iffy. Physicists now just see a resonance or a bump on a graph and call it a particle so you end up with a huge list of particles that are just different excitations of others. Its not like the old days where you saw a funny looking track in some detector and called it a new particle.
    • I mentioned the "official" listings in this comment. [slashdot.org]
  • Wow! Exactly what I wanted for christmas!

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