Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources neutrinos and quarks

Little'un has been put in an advanced physics class - at last - with 2 other boys.

he was asked to investigate neutrinos and specifically how they help you investigate quarks, but after much searching we have drawn a blank.
So...any physics experts out there to give us a pointer, pleeeeease

This should help

http://www.nevis.columbia.edu/ccfr/physics.html

Basically, you fire a beam of neutrinos at a nucleus and learn about quarks.

Whoah! Tallulah
In words maximum 2 syllables please

No, seriously, thanks for that - we are just digesting it.

As with so many things in physics one thing leads to another - now what flavour of quark would little'un like before bed (it's now 8:20 pm in the UK)

What a charmed strange life they lead...

You could think of it as holding something under a stream of running water, and how the water sprays off tells you something about what you held under it. Think a big jagged rock as compared to a small round ball. Or x-rays, which are the pattern of what bounces off an unknown object.

ETA: I just thought of the most obvious comparison: the sun as beam source, photons as neutrinos, your eyes as the detectors. You can tell a lot about the things the beam of photons hits by how they come back to your eyes.

Essentially, neutrinos can probe quarks via weak interactions. It will probably help if they try and have a basic understanding of the standard model first and look up the difference between strong and weak interactions

Here's some discussion on the experiments themselves:

http://conferences.fnal.gov/tevft/book/SECTION4.htm

You can specifically look up deep inelastic scattering (neutrinos aren't the only probe used, you can also use electrons or muons).

This might also help you: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fconferences.jlab.org%2Felba%2F2010_talks%2Fmorfin.pdf&rct=j&q=morfin%20quarks%20neutrinos&ei=Tq36TM69LMmLswbbq_nNAw&usg=AFQjCNGerNTteMWAkRVidQQaY-82_1f26Q&sig2=Fz7H-MNZadETcaRFlbTH0Q&cad=rja

Thanks both

I have found this site which has a nice way of explaining particle physics (?) which is extremely good and clear a complete dilettante like myself

http://www.particleadventure.org/index.html

I was watching a science program a while back, and there was a great quote about how this sort of collider method is like 'smashing two watches together to find out something about them'...can't find the original guy who said that, but it is a funny way to think of it.