bosons and all that jazz...

[simonineaston]

One of the great things about doing shifts at my local food share project is that I get to spend a few hours in the company of like-minded folk and have a good old chin-wag, so today's subject was finding out the truth. My driver pointed me in the direction of Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes. Here is a screenshot. My point is this. Crikey - what a long way we have come since 1986 - see here the crude representation of an atom - almost child-like. I imagine that we know heeps more about atomic physics than we did back then. Or maybe not.

screenshot of "atomic" symbol

[Jdsk]

The name of the boson was invented by your favourite physicist!

Jonathan

[rjb]

The problem with theoretical physics is that bright minds ponder and develop theories and then try and prove them which can take decades of work. I recall learning about the structure of the atom in the 1960's when our physics teacher said the curriculum was behind the curve as Quarks and other properties about the structure of the atoms nucleus were being proposed but no way of proving this until decades later when the CERN collider was built. Nowadays the internet is capable of updating us all on current issues with theoretical physics. Not that i am capable of understanding a lot of it.

[al_yrpal]

For 2 years I worked for the Rutherford laboratory which had linear particle accelerators designing equipment to detect the particles and understand them. I also worked on a CERN project. So CERN was not the start of the research it was going on long before the CERN torus. Very interesting Engineering, working with scientists from all over the world.

Al

[Mick F]

It's all boring .......................... or is it Bohr-ing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr_model

[Stevek76]

The fussy standing wave nature of electron orbitals was proposed in the 1920s and generally accepted not that long after along with the rest of the main concepts of quantum mechanics.

The persistence of more bohr like representations into even the present day is merely a stylistic choice.

[simonineaston]

Naming of parts appears to run the gamut from whimsical (strange & charm ) to prosaic (glue on).

You couldn't make it up... Wait a minute - they did!!