What is "particles"

Usage examples of "particles".

Similarly, the gluons and weak gauge bosons are the messenger particles for the strong and weak nuclear forces.

The other is quantum mechanics, which provides a theoretical framework for understanding the universe on the smallest of scales: molecules, atoms, and all the way down to subatomic particles like electrons and quarks.

Why are there so many fundamental particles, especially when it seems that the great majority of things in the world around us need only electrons, up-quarks, and down-quarks?

We saw some evidence of this in our attempt, described in the preceding chapter, to pinpoint the location of elementary particles such as electrons: By shining light of ever higher frequency on electrons, we measure their position with ever greater precision, but at a cost, since our observations become ever more disruptive.

To whatever extent they and their world can be reduced to a matter of particles or fields and their interactions, they feel diminished by that knowledge.

No experimental evidence indicates that any of these three particles is built up from something smaller.

Neutrinos proved very difficult to find because they are ghostly particles that only rarely interact with other matter: an average-energy neutrino can easily pass right through many trillion miles of lead without the slightest effect on its motion.

Many find it fatuous and downright repugnant to claim that the wonders of life and the universe are mere reflections of microscopic particles engaged in a pointless dance fully choreographed by the laws of physics.

But opinions diverge on whether the diverse and often unexpected phenomena that can occur in systems more complex than individual particles truly represent new physical principles at work, or whether the principles involved are derivative, relying, albeit in a terribly complicated way, on the physical principles governing the enormously large number of elementary constituents.

So is it really surprising that light waves are also composed of a huge number of particles, namely photons?

You see, more than three hundred years ago Newton proclaimed that light consisted of a stream of particles, so the idea is not exactly new.

And so, it might seem reasonable to guess that wave properties, such as interference patterns, can arise from a particle picture of light provided a huge number of photons, the particles of light, are involved.

The motion of microscopic particles becomes increasingly wild when they are examined and confined to ever smaller regions of space.

As the objects we study become increasingly complicated, consisting of more and more particle constituents, such quantum tunneling can still occur, but it becomes very unlikely since all of the individual particles must be lucky enough to tunnel together.

Since this energy must be quickly repaid, these particles will annihilate one another after an instant, relinquishing the energy borrowed in their creation.