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A Matrix Model of Lorenz Chaotic Attractors and Particle Physics
Physics Day
May 9
Other Scottish Country Dances for this Day
Today's Musings, History & Folklore
"But all that does not anti-matter now
We've found ourselves a black hole in space
And we're talking about Quark, Strangeness and Charm"
~ Quark, Strangeness and Charm, Hawkwind, 1977
Physicists and scientiific-minded Dancers! Need a challenge? Maybe just something challenging to ponder? This may be your dance! This 128 jig for 4 couples, a variation of Quarrie's jig, is composed of all meanwhiles! Not for the timid! This dance was devised by the Chicago branch who prior to 2019, danced at the Kuhn Barn at Fermilab, (short for Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics, located near Chicago in Batavia, Illinois.
Physics Day is a special event in the U.S. where students visit amusement parks to learn about science—especially the physics behind roller coasters! It’s also a great time to think about the tiny building blocks that make up everything in the universe.
One of those building blocks is the quark—a funny-sounding name taken from a line in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Quarks are super-small particles that join together to form protons and neutrons, the core parts of atoms. There are six types, or “flavours,” of quarks: up, down, strange, charm, top, and bottom.
This dance allows you to experience your inner elementary particles as couples dance a particular meanwhile "flavour": up/down, top/bottom and everyone's favourite, strangeness and charm ... common attributes of many fine dancers. 🤪 🤪 🤪 ⚛️ ⚛️ ⚛️
Quark's Jig
Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he hasn't got much of a bark
And sure any he has it's all beside the mark.
~ James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
Physics Day is an unofficial holiday which began over 25 years ago, partnering the American Association of Physics Teachers with amusement parks, many of which open their gates on a non-operating day, exclusively for physics students. There is a great opportunity to study physics in action by examining the principles of roller coaster mechanics, but the physics of elementary particles is another scientific frontier, celebrated in a Scottish Country Dance referring to flavours of elementary particles known as quarks.
The quark model was independently proposed by physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig, and the name, through a circuitous route, eventually took its spelling from the James Joyce quote from Finnegan's Wake.
A quark is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei.
Quarks have various intrinsic properties, including electric charge, mass, color charge, and spin. Quarks are the only elementary particles in the Standard Model of particle physics to experience all four fundamental interactions, also known as fundamental forces (electromagnetism, gravitation, strong interaction, and weak interaction), as well as the only known particles whose electric charges are not integer multiples of the elementary charge.
There are six types of quarks, known as flavors: up, down, strange, charm, top, and bottom.
From the wikipedia entry:
The quark flavors were given their names for several reasons. The up and down quarks are named after the up and down components of isospin, which they carry. Strange quarks were given their name because they were discovered to be components of the strange particles discovered in cosmic rays years before the quark model was proposed; these particles were deemed "strange" because they had unusually long lifetimes. In the past, bottom and top quarks were sometimes referred to as "beauty" and "truth" respectively, but these names have somewhat fallen out of use. While "truth" never did catch on, accelerator complexes devoted to massive production of bottom quarks are sometimes called "beauty factories."
For an interactive tour of quarks, neutrinos, antimatter, extra dimensions, dark matter, accelerators, and particle detectors, click the quark graphic to visit "The Particle Adventure" from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Click the dance cribs or description below to link to a printable version of the dance!
