Atom land: a guided tour through the strange (and impossibly small) world of particle physics 9781615193745, 9781615193738, 161519374X
Prologue: The journey begins -- Expedition I: Sea legs. Setting sail ; The ocean wave ... ; ... Or particle? ; Traveling
376 96 6MB
English Pages xvi, 284 pages Year 2018
Table of contents :
Prologue: The journey begins --
Expedition I: Sea legs. Setting sail
The ocean wave ...
... Or particle?
Traveling in the quantum field --
Expedition II: Atom land. Atoms
Going subatomic: the electron. Nuclear options. The source of chemistry --
Expedition III: The Isle of Leptons, and roads onward. Electromagnetism
Invariance and relativity
The good ship Dirac
Spin and antimatter
The electron's overweight siblings
Rest stop --
Gravity: a distant diversion. The weakest force
Planes and merry-go-rounds
Different, yet somehow, the same
Ripples in the space-time continuum --
Expedition IV: Great train journeys. Protons, neutrons, and the nucleus
Hadrons
Quarks and the strong force
Life beyond the bridge
Flavors and generations --
Expedition V: The Isles by air. The weak force
Parity, helicity, and chirality
Mixed messages
North from South --
Expedition VI: The remote neutrino sector. Massless matter?
The standard model is dead
long live the standard model!
Neutrino badlands --
Expedition VII: Into Bosonia. Symmetry and conservation
Symmetry and bosons
Virtual particles and the defense against infinity
Mass and hidden symmetry
Electroweak symmetry breaking
Hunting the Higgs --
Expedition VIII: Far East. Why go?
Clues and constraints
Sea monsters and dark matters
Supersymmetry
Into another dimension?
Over the edge
A fifth force
Into the cosmos.
