The Sub-Atomic Particle Poem
For extra-credit in class, the sub-atomic particle poem.
If you ask about “physics” there’s a lot that you’ll hear:
Kinematics and optics and that’s all fairly clear,
But how many here can claim to know what goes on
With the elusive, inconclusive Higgs boson?
Let’s start at the beginning: our world’s made of stuff.
And for some poor, sad people, they think that’s enough.
But let’s go down to atoms-no, let’s go beyond that!
Down to teeny-tiny particles the Big Bang begat.
We know all about leptons: the muon, the tau,
And the pitiful electron that now ceases to wow.
Though the Koide formula is still a little bizarre,
We’ve almost pinned down what these little guys are.
They’ve got half-integer spin, (thus as fermions they’re known)
And they tend to form doublets and no “strong force” is shown.
A quark’s a little different, a dependent sort,
Due to color confinement, they’ll together cavort
In “hadrons”-neutrons and protons the most well-represented
And in the nuclei of atoms, they’re oft together cemented.
They come in more flavors than leptons (actually, double)
But keeping most from decay will give you some bit of trouble;
“Top”, “bottom”, “charm”, and “strange” are pretty rare,
Needing high-energy conditions which require some care.
Type depends on addition or subtraction of a W boson within.
And Planck’s constant is here, to help us quantize their spin.
Gauge bosons are a whole new can of worms,
So ensure you’ve managed a firm grasp of your terms.
They’re carriers of properties, the type tells the sort,
And though teensy-weensy, don’t think they purport.
The photon is carrier for E.M. radiation,
Providing such neat properties its form of salutation.
It interacts with mass through the exchange of energy,
And elsewise shows massive things no form of synergy.
You see, it also is a wave, and has no rest mass,
So it’s different from the quanta that have a fat ***.
Furthermore, we have the issue of the W and Z,
These bosons proved to be the “weak force’s” key.
Though their life span is tiny, they’re really quite large
And each has a positive, negative, or neutral charge.
Each of these bosons’ spins amounts to just one,
Which I must admit is simpler to remember than some.
Gluons are bullies that make the poor quarks do tricks,
Though they’re similarly subject to what color charge inflicts:
They’re the bosons behind “strong force” and if math you abet,
It’s good in the business to know their color octet.
Don’t worry, my friends, we’re-in truth-almost there:
It’s just that the background is useful to share.
Now that we’ve talked of fermions and bosons galore,
Let’s touch on the particle that proves the real chore.
The Higgs boson! “God Particle!” The one yet to be observed,
And whose uncertainty in physics leaves some people perturbed.
These are the bosons thought to give mass to matter,
And its secrets won’t be gifted unto science on a silver platter.
It takes the Large Hadron Collider-expensive and vast-
To give us the data that might settle this at last.
~worst poem ever, fin~
If you ask about “physics” there’s a lot that you’ll hear:
Kinematics and optics and that’s all fairly clear,
But how many here can claim to know what goes on
With the elusive, inconclusive Higgs boson?
Let’s start at the beginning: our world’s made of stuff.
And for some poor, sad people, they think that’s enough.
But let’s go down to atoms-no, let’s go beyond that!
Down to teeny-tiny particles the Big Bang begat.
We know all about leptons: the muon, the tau,
And the pitiful electron that now ceases to wow.
Though the Koide formula is still a little bizarre,
We’ve almost pinned down what these little guys are.
They’ve got half-integer spin, (thus as fermions they’re known)
And they tend to form doublets and no “strong force” is shown.
A quark’s a little different, a dependent sort,
Due to color confinement, they’ll together cavort
In “hadrons”-neutrons and protons the most well-represented
And in the nuclei of atoms, they’re oft together cemented.
They come in more flavors than leptons (actually, double)
But keeping most from decay will give you some bit of trouble;
“Top”, “bottom”, “charm”, and “strange” are pretty rare,
Needing high-energy conditions which require some care.
Type depends on addition or subtraction of a W boson within.
And Planck’s constant is here, to help us quantize their spin.
Gauge bosons are a whole new can of worms,
So ensure you’ve managed a firm grasp of your terms.
They’re carriers of properties, the type tells the sort,
And though teensy-weensy, don’t think they purport.
The photon is carrier for E.M. radiation,
Providing such neat properties its form of salutation.
It interacts with mass through the exchange of energy,
And elsewise shows massive things no form of synergy.
You see, it also is a wave, and has no rest mass,
So it’s different from the quanta that have a fat ***.
Furthermore, we have the issue of the W and Z,
These bosons proved to be the “weak force’s” key.
Though their life span is tiny, they’re really quite large
And each has a positive, negative, or neutral charge.
Each of these bosons’ spins amounts to just one,
Which I must admit is simpler to remember than some.
Gluons are bullies that make the poor quarks do tricks,
Though they’re similarly subject to what color charge inflicts:
They’re the bosons behind “strong force” and if math you abet,
It’s good in the business to know their color octet.
Don’t worry, my friends, we’re-in truth-almost there:
It’s just that the background is useful to share.
Now that we’ve talked of fermions and bosons galore,
Let’s touch on the particle that proves the real chore.
The Higgs boson! “God Particle!” The one yet to be observed,
And whose uncertainty in physics leaves some people perturbed.
These are the bosons thought to give mass to matter,
And its secrets won’t be gifted unto science on a silver platter.
It takes the Large Hadron Collider-expensive and vast-
To give us the data that might settle this at last.
~worst poem ever, fin~