“I will love the light for it shows me the way, but I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.� - Og Mandino
1 / THE GALAXY 2 / PARTICLES 3 / QUANTUM MECHANICS
1
THE GALAXY / NO, NOT THE PHONE
1 2 3 4 5 MERCURY
VENUS
EARTH
MARS
J
5 6 7 8 9
JUPITER
SATURN
URANUS
NEPTUNE
PLUTO
MERCURY AKA: The Innermost Planet
Distance from sun:
Average Temperature:
Length of year:
57, 909,170 km 332 F 째
88 Days
1
VENUS AKA: The Veiled Planet
Distance from sun:
Average Temperature:
Length of year:
108,000,000 km 864 F 째
243 Days
2
EARTH
AKA: Home
Distance from sun:
Average Temperature:
Length of year:
149,000,000 km 61 F 째
365 Days
3
MARS
AKA: The Red Planet
Distance from sun:
Average Temperature:
Length of year:
227,900,000 km -80 F 째
687 Days
4
JUPITER
AKA: A Giant Among Planets
778,500,000 km
Distance from sun:
Average Temperature:
Length of year:
-234 F 째
11.86 earth years
5
SATURN AKA: The Elegant Planet
Distance from sun:
1,433,000,000 km
Average Temperature:
Length of year:
-288 F 째
29.7 earth years
6
URANUS AKA: The Sideways Planet
Distance from sun:
2,877,000,000 km
Average Temperature:
Length of year:
-355 F 째
84 earth years
7
NEPTUNE AKA: The Windy Planet
Distance from sun:
5,503,000,000 km
Average Temperature:
Length of year:
-353 F 째
165 earth years
8
PLUTO AKA: The Dwarf Planet
Distance from sun:
5,906,380,000 km
Average Temperature:
Length of year:
-400 F 째
248 earth years
9
30°
0°
Pe
60°
90°
50,000 Light Years
40,000 Light Years
30,000 Light Years
20,000 Light Years
10,000 Light Years
120° 150°
180°
Earth
330°
erseus
300°
270°
240° 210°
MILKEY WAY GALAXY 100,000 Light Years Across
2
PARTICLES / WE NEED TO GO DEEPER
THE STANDARD MODEL FOR THE MOTION OF PARTICLES FIG. 1
TYPES OF PARTICLES
3
MATTER ANTI-MATTER RADIATION
THIS IS WHAT MAKES UP OUR UNIVERSE
HADRONS (HEAVY PARTICLES)
LEPTONS (LIGHT PARTICLES)
“
HOW DO WE EXPLAIN ALL OF THESE PARTICLES AND WHAT THE HELL ARE HADRONS EVEN MADE OF? - MURRAY GELL-MANN
QUARKS Up Down Strange Charm Bottom Top
1968 1968 1968 1974 1977 1995
EVER HEARD OF PROTONS OR NEUTRONS?
If you’ve ever gone to high school you have. That’s because they are Hadrons. The most well known in fact. They are made up of 3 quarks each. Any Hadron composed of 3 quarks and that can decay into a proton is in fact called a baryon. Any Hadron with 2 quarks is a meson. They have too few quarks to decay into a proton.
QUARKS AND LEPTONS FALL INTO 3 GENERATIONS
1 NORMAL MATTER 2? 3? It is not known why there are 3 generations of matter. We have no idea why nature needs this number. The best known Lepton is the electron (no I didn’f forget to include it), but there is also the neutrino. Leptons are believed to be, like quarks, fundamental particles.
BOSON According to the modern quantum mechanical view of nature, forces are carried by particles called bosons. It is a “particle of light,� but also the particle responsible for electro-magnetic force. You may have heard of the Higgs Boson (everyone who is anyone has).
NEXT
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QUANTUM MECHANICS / IF YOU CAN DREAM IT.......THEN YOU’RE ALREADY AHEAD OF EVERYONE ELSE.
TINY SCIENCE Quantum Mechanics is the study of the scientific principles that govern and explain the behavior of subatomic particles and atoms. It is also potentially the must difficult subject to understand in our universe thus far. This is because it is extremely hard for us to visualize. To begin with, everyone understands classical mechanics, because it’s how we live day to day. If you kick a ball, it will fly in the direction you kicked it, even if you are particularly bad at sports.
CL AS SIC AL M
EC HA NIC S
However, when you reach the subatomic world, the rules get thrown out the window.
TO BEGIN WITH... In the 1900’s a man named Max Planck was studying something called “ultraviolet catastrophe” in Berlin. His problem was that the laws of physics predicted that if you heat up a box in such a way that no light can get out (known as a “black box”), it should produce an infinite amount of ultraviolet radiation. But that didn’t happen, instead the box radiated different colors, red, blue, white, just as heated metal does, but there was no infinite amount of anything. Planck became confused. These were laws of physics that perfectly described how light behaved outside of the box SO, why didn’t they accurately describe his black box scenario? At this point everyone assumed that light moved in a continous wave, but Planck didn’t. Albert Einstein would take Planck’s work and later theorize that light moves in both waves and particles.
BUT HOW DO YOU VISUALIZE IT? Here’s the thing...just because an electron or neutrino can be thought of as a particle like we talked about in the last section, does not mean it can’t also be a wave. Particles acting in a wave nature produces some weird effects. For example, if an electron traveling around a nucleus behaves like a wave, then its position at any one time becomes blurry in a way. Instead of being in a concrete point, the electron is blurred out in space. By this I’m saying that the electrons are not moving like one would expect based on classical mechanics, but we are not discussing classical mechanics. Unlike for example, a ball being thrown across a field, electrons traveling along an electrical current can sometimes follow weird paths, especially if they’re moving near the surface of a material. Moreover, electrons acting like a wave can sometimes burrow right through a barrier.
So what are the RULES?
CLASSIC
QUANTUM