Physics Topic: Jet Suppression in Heavy Ion Collisions
From now on I am going to write an entry each week explaining complex physical phenomenon, hopefully in a way in which anyone (even my mother…) can understand, as long as they put their mind to it. As many diagrams as necessary will be produced, however the number of formulae per entry is limited to one. For this week’s entry I have chosen “Jet Suppression in Heavy Ion Collisions” as it is something that has a rather daunting name but can be understood reasonably easily with the aid of diagrams.
First things first: “Heavy Ion Collisions” are what modern particle accelerators (RHIC or the doomsday device that is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Geneva) are all about. Basically, two atoms (or to be specific: ions, which are basically atoms with some electrons stripped off) of a “heavy” element such as lead or gold are bashed against each other at very high energy (basically, speeds that are 99.99% of the speed of light, 300 000km/s).
Doing this allows us to see what’s inside the atoms. On the first level, atoms consist of a nucleus and electrons. Inside the nucleus there are protons (positively charged) and neutrons (uncharged). But why stop there? Inside a proton or neutron there are 3 particles known as quarks. These are (as far as we know) the most elementary building blocks of matter. These are shown in the diagram on the left. The quarks are held together by gluons, which can be thought of as the glue that group the quarks and give the proton or neutron its structure. Read more…
Funnily enough, many of my friends are finally going vegetarian. I don’t think it’s particularly my influence (4 years without meat other than an accidental and unforgiven bite from a chicken sandwich last year…) but it does seem like the sensible choice in this day and age. The thing is that many people are put off going veg because of the hassle it causes for hosts providing food. Hopefully if, as it seems, it is becoming a much more socially accepted thing (well, I never really feel persecuted, other than perhaps at braais…) then more people will switch. And then chickens will overthrow us all. As the eloquent Troy McClure once said: “Don’t kid yourself, Jimmy. If a cow ever got the chance, he’d eat you and everyone you care about!”