Transcription
So we've described the atom in terms of the Rutherford ball model of the atom, and I alluded to in the last talk that we can further subdivide atoms into subatomic particles. This brings us into the realm of quantum theory.
Now, this will never come up directly in your exams, but knowing this, or knowing that this world exists, goes a long way into describing some of the phenomena that we will see in the various different modules in the course. So I don't want to be a teacher that says, "You'll just have to trust me." By knowing this basic knowledge, you will be able to understand those concepts, and that's going to serve you as a student more.
So how do we divide particles into subatomic particles? Well, all of the particles within our universe can be divided into either matter or force. Matter is what's known as fermions, and fermions can be further subdivided into quarks and leptons. Now, the vast majority of mass within our universe is made up of the either up or down quark, as we can see denoted by U and D here. In fact, our protons and our neutrons, cumulatively known as hadrons, are made of three quarks. The proton is made of two up and one down quark, and the neutron is made of two down and one up quark.
Now, what exactly are quarks and leptons? Well, they're what's known as quanta: small packets of energy and mass. Now, there are larger quarks: the charm, the strange, the top, and bottom quarks, and those are larger, more unstable quarks that readily degrade down into our up and down quarks. Fermions can also be divided into what's known as leptons. Now, these are not going to be, for the most part, important for our course, but I want to draw your attention to the electron, which we've seen before, and the electron neutrino. Those are going to come up, especially in our Nuclear Physics course. Our muons and our tau leptons are not going to be very useful within our course, but I've included them here for completeness' sake.
So this is what makes up matter within our universe. But we also experience forces in our universe: the four fundamental forces, the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force of gravity. Now, there are subatomic particles called bosons, which are the force carriers for these forces. And in the next three talks, we're going to look at the strong force, the weak force, and the electromagnetic force as they all relate to Radiology Physics.
Now, these force carriers are known as bosons. And the first one we look at here is called the blue one, the glue one. The glue one is responsible for the strong force. Then the photon, which we come across many times in our Radiology Physics course, is the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. And the Z and the W bosons are involved in the weak force. They're the force carriers for the weak force, which we'll look at again, especially in our Nuclear Medicine module.
Now, again, don't fret over this too much. None of this will be asked directly in exams, and we have really just dipped our toe into here, or scraped the surface. And you can go much more deeper. There's a real string you can start pulling on and go down a rabbit hole. What will come up in exams is a question bank that I have curated, and I've linked that in the first line in the description. Otherwise, we're going to move on now into the four fundamental forces. We're going to cover three of them in the next talks. Let's start by having a look at the strong force. I'll see you there.