Nuclear and Particle Physics Flashcards
What is antimatter?
A particle with the same mass/rest energy as its matter particle but with opposite charge and opposite quantum numbers.
What happens when a particle and its antiparticle meet?
They annihilate to create a photon.
Define baryon.
A particle consisting of three quarks; protons and neutrons are both baryons.
What is the most stable baryon?
The proton.
What is baryon number?
+1 for a baryon, -1 for an antibaryon, and 0 for any other particle.
Describe a cyclotron.
A particle accelerator with two semicircular electrodes that accelerates charged particles in a spiral path.
What are fundamental particles?
Particles that cannot be broken down into smaller constituents.
What is a gauge boson?
Fundamental particles that are the carriers of the fundamental forces.
What is the gluon?
The gauge boson of the strong interaction.
Define hadron.
Particles that undergo strong interactions, made up of quarks, including mesons and baryons.
What is a lepton?
Fundamental particles that do not interact via the strong force.
List examples of leptons.
- Electron
- Electron neutrino
- Muon
- Muon neutrino
- Tau
- Tau neutrino
What is lepton number?
+1 for a lepton, -1 for an antilepton, and 0 for any other particle.
What does a linac do?
Accelerates charged particles through sets of oscillating electric fields along a straight path.
Define meson.
A particle consisting of one quark and one antiquark.
Give examples of mesons.
- Pions
- Kaons
What is the nucleon number?
The number of neutrons and protons in the nucleus.
What is a photon?
The gauge boson of the electromagnetic force.
Describe the plum pudding model.
A model of the atom that describes it as a ball of positive charge with evenly distributed negative electrons.
What is proton number?
The number of protons in the nucleus.
Define quark.
A fundamental particle that interacts with other quarks via the strong interaction.
What are the six flavors of quarks?
- Up
- Down
- Charm
- Strange
- Top
- Bottom
What is quark confinement?
The principle that states quarks cannot exist alone and must be in pairs or threes.
What is relativistic motion?
Particles traveling at close to the speed of light experiencing time at a slower rate.
What is strangeness?
A measure of how many anti-strange quarks a particle has.
True or False: A K+ meson has strangeness +1.
True.
What is thermionic emission?
When heated metal releases free electrons from its surface.
What is the weak interaction?
The force that causes flavor change in quarks and leptons, responsible for beta decay.
What are W + /W/Z 0?
Gauge bosons of the weak interaction.
What is an isotope?
elements with the same number of protons but different number of neutrons.
What is a positron?
The antiparticle of an electron. It has the same mass but opposite charge and lepton number of -1
Give an example of particle production
photon –> electron + positron
What is wave-particle duality?
waves have particle-like properties and particles have wave-like properties.
