Particular Particles
Known for being massless, this particle is responsible for carrying the electromagnetic force.
What is a photon?
This process occurs when an unstable isotope emits an electron in order to reach a more stable state.
What is Beta Decay?
This term describes the rate of change of velocity over time, with units of meters per second squared.
What is acceleration?
This physics phenomenon is responsible for time dilation and length contraction as an object approaches the speed of light.
What is special relativity?
This scientist was condemned to house arrest by the church due to his support of the heliocentric model, using evidence of Jupiter and its moons' orbits from his telescope. He also cut off an kept one of his dead daughter's fingers for some reason.
Who is Galileo Galilei?
This point-like particle has a half-integer spin and is an essential component of ordinary matter.
What is the electron?
This isotope has a half-life of 5700 years, making it very useful in radiocarbon dating of very old organic material.
What is Carbon-14?
This very commonly used approximation is used when deriving the formula for the period of a pendulum, and results in the period being independent of the initial angle.
Einstein won his Nobel prize in physics in 1921 for his paper on this phenomenon.
What is the photoelectric effect?
This experiment, performed by Ernest Rutherford, was used as evidence against the plum-pudding model, instead claiming most of the atom is actually empty space.
What is the gold foil experiment?
This particle was the first mathematically predicted by Dirac and Weyl as a counterpart to the electron. (This is the first particle to be theorized, then discovered!)
What is the positron?
This particle was discovered before subatomic particles, meaning nobody knew it was just a helium nucleus. (Maybe Andrew Tate's favorite particle?)
What is an alpha particle?
For rotational motion, this quantity, analogous to mass in linear motion, depends on the mass distribution relative to the axis of rotation.
What is moment of inertia?
This hypothetical particle (popular in science fiction) travels faster than the speed of light, enabling it to travel backwards in time.
What is a tachyon?
During the debates of the nature of light, what famous experiment, conducted by Thomas Young in 1801, demonstrated the wave nature of light by showing interference patterns?
What is the double-slit experiment?
This particle was discovered at the lab Garath worked at for his summer internship, and gives all particles their mass.
What is the Higgs Boson?
This term refers to the amount of nuclear material required to sustain nuclear fission.
What is critical mass?
Just as velocity is the rate of change of position, and acceleration is the rate of change of velocity, this term is used to describe the rate of change of acceleration.
What is jerk?
In general relativity, this mathematical object is used to store information needed for the complex calculations of curved space-time in Einstein's field equations.
What is the metric tensor?
This 19th-century problem in physics highlighted the failure of classical physics to explain blackbody radiation, leading to the development of quantum theory.
What is the ultraviolet catastrophe?
These weakly interacting particles, generated largely in the nuclear reactions of stars, seem to oscillate between the lepton types, suggesting a possible CP-violation.
What are neutrinos?
This interaction occurs when a photon hits an electron, causing a change in its momentum. (Andrew Tom studied the inverse of this interaction at his summer internship)
What is Compton Scattering?
This type of force exists as a result of operating in a non-inertial reference frame, like centrifugal force in a rotating reference.
What is a fictitious force?
Which experiment (which ASU attempted earlier this year!), conducted in 1919 during a solar eclipse, provided experimental evidence for general relativity by observing the bending of light from distant stars around the sun?
What is the Eddington experiment?
This 1974 discovery revealed that certain subatomic particles could decay into other particles in ways that defied conservation laws, leading to a significant reevaluation of particle physics.
What is the Weak Interaction?