Sub Atomic Particles

[Theland]

Can anybody explain the meaning of the qualities given to some sub atomic particles:-
"Colour, Flavour, Spin. (I seem to remember there were others but forgotten them. I'm particularly interested in "Spin" as I recall this was observed and proven but defied logic and reason. As you can guess, I'm not a scientist.

[Theland]

As I recall, "Spin" had three values, half, one, and two.

[kempie]

This should start you off in the right direction (or at least impart angular momentum) to aid your search.

[jake-the-peg]

Spin (as Kempie alludes to) is effectively the angular momentum possessed by a sub-atomic particle.

A major problem with understanding quantum mechanics is that there is a tendency to think of anaolgies which inevitably break because they are analogies. For example people tend to thing of electrons as little balls and as they have angular momentum they must be spinning. However for this to work out it'd have to be moving faster than light.

Dirac solved all this mathematically 80 years ago but you need a good grasp of quantum mechanics and some reasonably advanced maths to see what's going on.

[jake-the-peg]

As I say one of the problems with this area is that people tend to think in analogies which doesn't work and in some cases there are no appropriate ones.

This is particularly true when you look at what is going on within protons and neutrons etc. It was discoverred that these were not truely fundamental but comprised of other components which where named quarks ( an obsure refrence to James Joyce - pronounced to rhyme with mark)

The interaction between these is governed by a force that we do not see in every day life - it's very strong at tiny distances but non-existant at our dimentions. In the same way that bodies that we see affected by gravity have attributes like mass that affect this quarks have attributes like colour and flavour that affect the way they interact with this "strong" force.

Giving these properties names rather stretched the use of analogy but they got primary colours because they needed to "add up" to a neutral state. So you could have red, green and blue or red (can you see the analogy straining at the seams?)

So these properties are do not actually relate to things in everyday life but rather describe the behavour of what we see when we poke nature about with a big enough stick

[Loosehead]

not to mention Top, Bottom and Charm eh Jake!

[jake-the-peg]

Top and bottom were also Truth and Beauty for a while!

and Charm goes with Strangeness - I think somebody must have dated some of the same girls I did!

[Theland]

Top, bottom, strange, etc, yes, I dimly recall these terms. Thanks for that. Just have to get another of those science books, "... for the Layman," that I used to read.

This is where logic and reason break down is it not, unless mathematics is your first language, and then it all makes perfect sense?