I followed the link Silas provided. Rather than seeing a list to be memorised my brain started throwing up all sorts of related facts. The pieces of physics I have acquired from various sources over the years reasserted themselves and I tried to piece together just how charm antiquarks fit into things. And try to remember just why it was that if I finally meet my intergalactic hominid pen pal and she tries to shake hands with her left hand I can be sure that shaking would be a cataclysmic-ally bad idea. I seem to recall being able to test symmetry with cobalt or something. But I think it’s about time I listened to Feynman again.
Point is, being able to find the list of elementary particles more overwhelming than, say, a list of the world’s countries requires a certain amount of knowledge and a desire for a complete intuitive grasp. That’s not modesty-signalling in my book.
Few people know what the term “elementary particle” means. (It’s not a billiard ball.)
It’s not a billiard balls from the movie they showed? Then surely ‘elementary particles’ must refer to those things on the Table of the Elements that was on the wall!
I followed the link Silas provided. Rather than seeing a list to be memorised my brain started throwing up all sorts of related facts. The pieces of physics I have acquired from various sources over the years reasserted themselves and I tried to piece together just how charm antiquarks fit into things. And try to remember just why it was that if I finally meet my intergalactic hominid pen pal and she tries to shake hands with her left hand I can be sure that shaking would be a cataclysmic-ally bad idea. I seem to recall being able to test symmetry with cobalt or something. But I think it’s about time I listened to Feynman again.
Point is, being able to find the list of elementary particles more overwhelming than, say, a list of the world’s countries requires a certain amount of knowledge and a desire for a complete intuitive grasp. That’s not modesty-signalling in my book.
Everyone knows what a country is. Few people know what the term “elementary particle” means. (It’s not a billiard ball.)
It’s not a billiard balls from the movie they showed? Then surely ‘elementary particles’ must refer to those things on the Table of the Elements that was on the wall!