Someone explain the Standard Model to me

stamp collecting

>>8899973
learn quantum field theory first then you can learn it in 15 minutes

>>8899973

The "Standard Model" is (last I checked, I'm not a physicist) the latest-and-greatest theory about the fundamental questions of WHAT the fundamental particles in the universe actually are, and what the physical forces are that act on those particles. It's the best-available picture to describe why physical shit physically happens.

That said, the people who cobbled it together have a good deal of humility, and recognize that their model is incomplete because really big stuff doesn't marry up with really little stuff, so far as the physical science people are able to tell (again, last I checked). The scientists will happily revise their paradigm (indeed they honestly expect to) once a better model is found, or once other compelling evidence of some kind is found.

>>8900014

The idea of a "basic, unbreakable" (fundamental) particle is ancient, and is presumably still regarded as a useful category. But it turns out that atoms are not such particles, and so their name, which has stuck, is a misnomer. Now, so far as we can tell, /electrons/ are an example of fundamental particles, as are the /quarks/ which comprise protons and neutrons. Also neutrinos, and other cutely named bits, but these are more exotic.

With a little violence to accuracy...

Ya got two main classes of fundamental particles: "bosons" and "fermions".

Fermions have half-integer spin, which for reasons, makes it so no two fermions can share the exact same quantum state. When applied to electrons, this is Pauli's exclusion principle. Fermions are what we usually think of as "matter".

Bosons have integer spin, which for reasons, allows as many bosons of the same quantum configuration to occupy the same state. Bosons are typically "force carriers".

For Fermions, there are two main classes of particles based on what forces they participate in.

One class is that of "Quarks", which interact by the stong, em, weak, and gravitation interactions (all of them). Quarks are divided up into 3 "generations", or pairs of quark types; the up and down, the charm and strange, and the top and bottom quarks. Quarks are not usually observed in isolation, but as composite particles called "hadrons", of which their are 2 and 3 quark varieties, called "meson" and "baryons" respectively. Neutrons and protons are examples of baryons. We don't see quarks by themselves because the way the strong force works; it pulls harder the farther things get apart until a bond snaps, but the energy put into breaking the bond creates new quarks. This is called "confinement".

>>8900022

The other class are "Leptons", and like quarks come in 3 generations; the electron and the electron neutrino. the muon and muon neutrino, and the tau and tau neutrino. Leptons do not feel the strong force, but interact with the em, weak, and gravitation forces. You are familiar with the electron, the muon and tau are just heavier versions. Neutrinos are very ghost like because they have no charge, and thus only interact by weak and gravity forces.

The forces themselves are mediated by the force carriers. Gluon for strong, photon for em, and the W and Z for weak forces. Notice how gravity is not included in your chart. Actually gravity is not accounted for in the standard model, but some extensions include the graviton.

Lastly, all of these particles have anti particle twins with opposite charge.

At the end of the day you have this nomenclature zoo of "-ons", but once you get it straight, it isn't that bad.

Gravity is a comparitively incridibly PATHETIC force which yet exerts it influence everywhere, on everything which has mass, all the time (please correct if I've mis-stated something here). The electromagnetic force is a far, far stronger force, having its conventional uses (a tiny magnet can pull a little piece of iron away from the entire mass of the whole earth, acting on it with gravity). The weak force is something to do with atomic decay, and the strong force (strongest of all) somehow keeps atomic nuclei together IIRC.

Other stuff about flavors, color, etc, to classify these things.

Please let me know how I did /sci/.

File: FB_IMG_1472998675342.jpg (42KB, 720x882px) Image search: [Google]

42KB, 720x882px

>>8900024
Thank you!

> intrinsic angular momentum operator (which corresponds to the rotational freedom) for an electron or photon has only two eigenvalues.

wait so does that mean an electron or photon can't rotate in the z axis? what?

>>8900059
it's complicated

>>8900029
You did great.
Yeah gravity is just too weak to be relevant in particle physics. (Also we don't have a quantum theory of gravity, so that fact is convenient for us).

Weak force is responsible for the beta decay, where a neutron decays into proton, electron and antineutrino.
Strong force holds nucleus together (the force is called strong because it is much stronger than E&M - it keeps many protons close to each other against their enormous electric repulsion) and also alpha decay ( some configurations of neutrons and protons are not stable, the famous radioactive atoms).

>>8900133
>weak
>beta

hmmmm...

Brainlet here.

I bought myself a textbook on this out of curiosity. I'm just getting lost in the thicket of terminology. I try to look the terms up, but they're explained with other incomprehensible terms and ideas. I look those terms up, and those too are explained with incomprehensible terms and ideas. At this point, I get frustrated and stop. How should I approach this? I have no idea where to begin.

>>8899989
Wait.. isn't physics NOT stamp collecting?

>>8900133
>just too weak
Oh. So is that why it's so difficult to account for gravity on the quantum scale?

>>8900187
I recommend a more basic book. Search on Google/Quora on particle physics books and see which one for your level.

>>8900207
Depends. If you mean quantum scales like particle accelerators, cosmic rays, etc then the effect would be so small and the errors are much larger so that gravity effects are just negligible.

For much much bigger energies, like big bang, where you are in the quantum realm but with strong gravity, we just don't have a theory for it.
Our theory of gravitation is classical, that is, for big chunks of matter. Including quantum behavior in general relativity brings many problems and things just don't work out. It is one of the big open problems in physics right now and the solution doesn't seem near at all.

>>8899973
Really ugly yet incredibly accurate model of particle physics.

>>8900378
How big would a particle accelerator have to be to do experiments on quantum gravity? I've hear suggestions of building accelerators around the kuiper belt before, or would it be smaller or maybe even bigger?

>>8900187
What sort of physics have you studied if any? That should give you an idea of roughly where to start from.

>>8899973

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igl8hE3Eac0

>>8900187

http://physics.info/standard/

>>8899973

There's two basic types, the bosons which are "energy" and the fermions which are "matter".

>>8899973
If the particle in question isnt a regular part of a chemists vocabulary then its a false god of the physicist religion