A Conversation for Ask h2g2
Respectable
Irene Posted Oct 10, 1999
I'll do my best. Will take some thought though.
I find that sometimes a dose of history helps to explain things, becauset you are not just presented with cold facts but with the thoughts and confusion etc. of the people who came up with these crazy ideas in the first place...
Respectable
Jan^ Posted Oct 12, 1999
Umm... History is always confusing, and I don't think that presenting a novitiate, or even an A-level student with the history of Particle Physics will make their understanding clearer. As in all advanced teaching, you have to tailor your content to your audience, otherwise it is too easy to ramble into interesting, but dead, ends and become more confused than ever.
Not to say that an article is a bad idea, it is just that you cannot cram years of education into one, or even several, articles without writing a textbook. Textbooks exist already, so why reinvent the wheel? A summary with lots of references would be more useful.
This is just my opinion, but I don't envy anyone the task of covering QED,QCD, Relativity etc. etc. in less than a few years.
Respectable
Irene Posted Oct 12, 1999
True. But I wouldn't attempt to cover those in great detail (partially because I don't know them in great detail myself, being an experimentalist). However, you can, I believe, communicate to people the flavour and basic ideas of a subject reasonably easily...although without pictures it is significantly more difficult. If people want to learn the nitty gritty, I agree it is best to consult a textbook or two (or 10....).
For a really good account of QED for the everyday person, R. P. Feyman's book "QED" is an excellent read (it is based upon a lecture series, which he first gave here in NZ).
Respectable
Jan^ Posted Oct 13, 1999
Yep, Feynman is always good value (apart from his biographies, which I can't stand). I'll attempt to create a map of Physics for you - the first OHP I ever saw at university - which sets things in context - it is a graph with size along the x-axis (quark to universe) and speed on the y (0 to c). It is very helpful. Believe it or not.
Oh, btw I am also an experimentalist, not a theorist.
Respectable
jb Posted Oct 13, 1999
I'd be happy to try and help create some kind of article. I agree that the diagram of size/speed is useful. The other useful piccy is the energy vs. appropriate theory one. There's a large number of these in various books and articles, usually done as time since the big bang versus what's going on at that time. This is, in my experiencem, is also a good way to go about explaining how stuff fits together.
One comment - it's often easier to start with now (macroscopic) and work backwards, otherwise you end up starting with quantum gravity, about which we know very little indeed. I've seen articles where this is done, and you just end up losing people before you've started.
btw I'm afraid I must confess to being a theorist. Shame.
Article
jb Posted Oct 13, 1999
ps Please have a look at my first article, Physics and the Knowledge of Ignorance
http://www.h2g2.com/A188624
and let me know what you think. Thanks.
Article
Jan^ Posted Oct 13, 1999
Oops, pressed the wrong key, hence the blank entry above.
I've left some thoughts on the article page, and would be happy to write some bits to contribute should you need them. I'll also do that map.
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Irene Posted Oct 13, 1999
It seems there's a ball rolling here. Perhaps all three of us could collaborate.
I'll do my best to write the basic introduction to the ideas of particle physics I've had in mind over the weekend...start with matter and work down, with the odd spot of history here and there. It's actually quite a nice story, which I started to put together for a conference, but had to drop in the end. Will leave a reference to it here when I post it.
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Jan^ Posted Oct 14, 1999
Great, I'd love to collaborate. I do think however that a gentle introduction is required, leading to more theoretical articles. I would love to do something on solid state physics, and would also like to do the gentle introduction bit (I have taught at various levels over the years so know what is required, and thanks to my promotion I can give hints as to what is acceptable). Let's do it - Physics for the Confused
It would help if we can communicate via email or ICQ on this. See icq.com for ICQ, my ICQ number is 32423753.
This may be a long project though, but we can talk about that.
Just accepting it
wingpig Posted Oct 14, 1999
I saw something once that suggested gravitation was due to a particle flux acting in the opposite direction to the net effect. W-particles or something were mentioned. Anyone heard of this?
Just accepting it
Jan^ Posted Oct 14, 1999
NO, but W particles are mediators of the weak force. I'm not sure what a particle flux has to do with it. Sounds like Startrek to me
Just accepting it
Irene Posted Oct 14, 1999
The nearest I can come to this is that the hope is to descibe gravity in terms of the exchange of particles (gravitons) which would (hopefully) allow unification with the other forces which also result from the exchange of particles ... this will be REALLY confusing to most of you out there!
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Irene Posted Oct 14, 1999
OK, Physics for the confused it is...and a long project it probably is.
I'll look into ICQ.
I must say, this thing has snowballed. I found h2g2 a couple of weeks ago and thought I might write a couple of articles....
LOL Irene
Just accepting it
jb Posted Oct 15, 1999
I've heard of this sort of thing. It's the idea that the universe is full of particles whizzing around everywhere, hitting us all the time from every direction. If there's something heavy, it blocks the particles, and so less hit you coming from the direction of the heavy thing. Hence, there is a net force towards the heavy thing, which we have been mistakenly interpreting as an attractive force.
Neat idea, shame its wrong!
Why is iron magnetic?
E'dalethni II Posted Oct 24, 1999
The equations for light actually describe a spiral. The electric and magnetic portions are taken from perpendicular planes drawn through the spiral with the current 'location' plotted onto them. I could draw what I'm talking about much better. Therefore the reason they are perpendicular is because they are defined that way.
Just accepting it
wingpig Posted Oct 25, 1999
I don't watch Star Trek. Anyway, there was a different form of radiation of which they'd never seen the like before every week.
The thing at the bottom sounds like the one I heard. Given theat there's the strong, weak, gravitational and radiational things whizzing about, where do all the various subatomic particles fit in? Can anyone neatly summarise all the WIMPS, BOSUNS, nuons, gluons and quarks in less than three pages? I would particularly like to hear from people that say "the thing about something having to rotate 720° before it gets back to the starting position (ie rotational symmetry of ½) is that it's just a way of describing it, it doesn't actually do it". Are weakly interacting massive particles the mediators of the weak interaction? Is this the same as Van Der Waals forces? Seeing as photons must have zero mass to be able to travel at the speed of light, how come their path is affected by gravity? WHY is gravity a side-effect of the curvature of space-time? I'll admit that it sounds nice but it doesn't explain anything.
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Researcher 55172 Posted Oct 25, 1999
As the confused person who started this thread all those weeks ago with my question about iron and magnetism, let me say that I really applaud your efforts in trying to explain these esoteric physical phenomena in terms that the rest of us might be able to unserstand.
There are many questions to be answered and the truth is that while we have developed tools to explain how things work, we seldom know the real underlying "hows". In other words, our theories and maths and diagrams do a nice job of conceptualising things and do so to the extent of being able to predict outcomes, but we'll probably never really understand why particles have spin or colour or strangeness, just that they do (or at least that's how it seems to me in 1999!). We'll know about the Poynting vector, but not know whether or not it always need be so, as we have not yet detected or predicted a contrary example.
I think it was Feynman's father who said that things in motion keep moving because of momentum, but nobody knows why. That is a pretty profound insight. Even Newton admitted to an inability to explain how gravity acted at a distance, despite having been the first to explain what gravity did.
I did two years of a three year physics undergraduate course and studied quantum electrodynamics too, so I know enough phyiscs to get me into trouble. However, I still wonder at the deep problems. There is a real beauty to this field of enquiry that the average person never gets to see. If your collaborative efforts reveal this beauty and wonder to a wider audience, you will have left the planet in a better state than it was when you arrived and that's not a bad achievement in a lifetime.
More power to your elbows!
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Irene Posted Oct 25, 1999
You are right. Physics today is desciptive...we observe how the Universe works and try to find a way of summarising it, but just why it is the way it is is a matter for philosophers it seems.
There is something called the "Anthropic Principle" (I may have spelt that incorrectly) which states that "the Universe is the way it is because we are in it", i.e. if any of the laws were subtely different then they would not be conducive to life and, hence, we would not be here to study the laws. It's a bit circular.
Thanks for your vote in favour...the enormity of the task at hand is starting to sink in.
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Respectable
- 21: Irene (Oct 10, 1999)
- 22: Jan^ (Oct 12, 1999)
- 23: Irene (Oct 12, 1999)
- 24: Jan^ (Oct 13, 1999)
- 25: jb (Oct 13, 1999)
- 26: jb (Oct 13, 1999)
- 27: Jan^ (Oct 13, 1999)
- 28: Jan^ (Oct 13, 1999)
- 29: Irene (Oct 13, 1999)
- 30: Jan^ (Oct 14, 1999)
- 31: wingpig (Oct 14, 1999)
- 32: Jan^ (Oct 14, 1999)
- 33: Irene (Oct 14, 1999)
- 34: Irene (Oct 14, 1999)
- 35: jb (Oct 15, 1999)
- 36: E'dalethni II (Oct 24, 1999)
- 37: wingpig (Oct 25, 1999)
- 38: Researcher 55172 (Oct 25, 1999)
- 39: Researcher 55172 (Oct 25, 1999)
- 40: Irene (Oct 25, 1999)
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