PHYS 102 Chapter Notes - Chapter 32: Baryon Number, Antiparticle, Mass Number
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PHYS 102 Full Course Notes
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Particle accelerators are used to accelerate charged particles, such as electrons and protons, to very high energy. High energy particles have short wavelength and so can be used to probe the structure of matter at very small distances in great detail. High kinetic energy also allows the creation of new particles through collision (via =(cid:2870)). Cyclotrons and synchrotrons use a magnetic field to keep the particles in a circular path and accelerate them at intervals by high voltage. An antiparticle has the same mass as a particle but opposite charge. Certain other properties may also be opposite: for example, the antiproton has baryon number (nucleon number) opposite to that for the proton. In all nuclear and particle reactions, the following conservation laws hold: momentum, angular momentum, mass-energy, electric charge, baryon number, and lepton numbers. Certain particles have a property called strangeness, which is conserved by the strong force but not by the weak force.
