I Recently Learned to Read Feynman Diagrams and Think They Are Fun

Don't say that line if you are single. Because you will stay single.

But they are. Fun.

And they're like taking QED physics and making it go back to kindergarten. Yay!

I also like how they often look like native American pictographs and petroglyphs.

The one above is for beta decay.

It shows this in an elegant shorthand:

"The Feynman diagram for beta minus decay of a neutron into a proton, electron, and electron antineutrino via an intermediate heavy W− bosonIn β− decay, the weak interaction converts a neutron (n) into a proton (p) while emitting an electron (e−) and an antineutrino (νe):

n → p + e− + νe

At the fundamental level (as depicted in the Feynman diagram below), this is due to the conversion of a down quark to an up quark by emission of a W− boson; the W− boson subsequently decays into an electron and an antineutrino."

The backwards arrows have a spooky explanation: "For antiparticles, because they are equivalent to real particles moving backwards in time, their arrows are shown pointing backwards, from right to left."

That's the antineutrino in this diagram.

"The up, charm and top quarks have electric charges + 2/3 and the down, strange and bottom quarks have charge - 1/3." They combine in threes to create particles based on these fractional charges.

That's why you see three quarks composing the neutron above and the proton which is a result of the radioactive decay.

The book I'm reading has even better diagrams but I'm too lazy to scan right now.

Quantum chromodynamics are cool.

What is your favorite quark?

Do neutrinos bother you? They bother me.

And do you believe there is such a thing as a "graviton" or not?

Physicists say they just don't see the "graininess" in gravity the way they find it in light.

Our understanding of gravity is still so primitive.

"Graininess" is the physicists' actual preferred term.

I suppose "discrete" would have been the term in Newton's time, as in "discrete" versus "continuous."

Did you know this: "Quarks were named after a phrase used in James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake to describe the cries of seagulls. He wrote that they gave 'three quarks,' or three cheers."

See, this blog is edumacational.

I should apply for public funding now.

I know I knew that once and then forgot it.

I hate when that happens.

Why doesn't my brain just COMPLETELY forget it. Then I feel I'm learning something new and don't feel bad for realizing I knew it and forgot it.

I believe this is called "liminal shit."