NATS 1740 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: M-Theory, Weak Interaction, Virtual Particle

• School: York University
• Department: Natural Science
• Course: NATS 1740
• Professor: Radu Campeanu

Document Summary

Counting in powers of 10; distances in light-years. The structure of an atom electron, proton and neutron. Most of the elementary particles (baryons and mesons) are built out of quarks. The electron and its relatives (leptons) do not contain quarks. In macro-world the gravitational and electromagnetic are the universal forces. In micro-world two nuclear universal forces are added: The weak force is responsible for the disintegration of particles. The strong force is the force that chains quarks together (also called color force) The nuclear force between protons and neutrons is a weaker relative of the color force. All forces are described as an exchange of carriers process (feynman diagrams) Heisenberg"s uncertainty principle: one cannot specify the position of a particle which moves with a well-defined energy. Consequence: particle probability waves, best demonstrated by the double slit experiment. Dirac"s uncertainty principle: it is impossible to determine the energy of a particle at an exact moment in time.