Atom Land, Jon Butterworh, c. 2017

Atom Land: A Guided Tour Through The Strange (And Impossible Small) World of Particle Physics, Jon Butterworth, author of Most Wanted Particle, c. 2017, 2018.

Jon Butterworth is a professor  of physics and astronomy at University College London of the ATLAS collaboration at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.

The discipline: the study of the very smallest things goes by many different names; none of them is perfect:

• particle physics: most commonly used
• elementary particle physics
• high-energy physics

The Standard Model

• more of a theory than a model
• compares with "the Curry Mile," in Manchester, England, where the author grew up. Indian and Pakistani restaurants on "the Curry Mile" called themselves "Standard," but they were anything but Standard: they set the bar for "Indian food" and the bar was very, very high.
• likewise, the the "Standard Model" that summarizes the current state of our knowledge of the fundamental forces and constituents of matter is a very, very excellent model
• the theory (or "Standard Model") was further validated with the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012

Eight expeditions:

• this book will take the reader on eight expeditions deep into the heart of material universe
• the exhibitions will examine the smallest constituents of matter and the forces that bind and break them

First expedition

• glass
• silicon dioxide: for every atom of silicon, two atoms for oxygen -- 14 electrons
• it's interesting: the writer says the nucleus has a positive electric charge of fourteen time that of the electron (that is why fourteen electrons are attracted to it -- but the author has not yet used the word protons or neutrons
• science of particles
• science of waves: light, sound, radio, X-rays, and more esoteric waves
• the physics of waves is in many waves more interesting and more complex than the physics of particles

Wave: to describe a wave --

• amplitude: amplifier -- amplifies the wave, increases the sound
• frequency -- 2 Hz -- two cycles every second
• wavelength  -- distance between two neighboring peaks, or troughs
• the speed at which a wave travels across a pond is simply: frequency x wavelength -- cycle/second x meter = frequency 2 waves / second x 0.1 meter/wave = 0.2 meters / second (waves cancel out)

Interference: requires two or more waves; not a property of a single wave.

"This rather simple fact has surprisingly far-reaching consequences." -- p. 12 

It seems when I'm riding my bike at night, I "lose" sight of the sidewalk in front of me when a car (with headlights on) approaches me. I've always wondered if the car's headlights "interfere" with my bicycle light -- and essentially "negating" my own bike light?

Waves and particles, think about this: while bullets fired from different directions may collide, there is no way that firing more shots could reduce the number of bullets. But making more waves might indeed make part of an ocean bay calmer.

So, two reasons why waves are more interesting than particles,

• interference
• diffraction: spreading out; this property allows waves to go around corners without any bending force being applied

I'll quit here for now.