The Standard Model: Part 1- Quarks and Leptons

Chances are, if you've seen a science program about physics in the last five to ten years, the narrator or host mentioned the Standard Model. The Standard Model is just that: it's the most commonly used (standard) mathematical description of the universe (model) for high energy physics at the moment. It's also relatively recent. The oldest parts of the model (electrons) date back to the late 1800's, while some of the details (neutrinos, the Higg's Boson) are still being debated today. After the jump, I'm talking about some of the particles found in the Standard Model.

CPT Symmetry

So, this is a random post on some background physics I felt like looking into. I've heard lots of talk about CPT symmetry, so I figured a post on it was reason enough to research it a little.

What I Do At Work

So, today at work I got a little bored. I was doing some text editing, and so I decided to take occasional screen shots of me doing work. After the jump are two of the shots, with a brief explanation of what I was doing at the time. I might append to this post as the evening progresses.

The Importance of Research

This is one of those topics that's just sort of close to my heart, so I thought I'd throw a post on it out there.

Conservation Laws

Sorry for the delay in postings guys. Busy week this past week. Anyway, I had most of another post done Tuesday, but decided it was getting too technical without some more background. So, here's more background!

Oh Yeah, I forgot...

If ever any of this is not as clear as I had hoped, please let me know. I'd be glad to either rewrite something to clarify it, or to publish another post on the background of the topic.
More importantly, if you find a factual error, please, please, please let me know. I'm not a theorist, and I don't know everything about physics. This is my attempt to apply what I do know to try help other people understand physics, and see why it's something everyone should care about. So, I will eventually get something wrong if I haven't already. Please call me out on it, so I can post a correction.
Thanks guys, and hopefully you'll enjoy this as much as I have so far.

Questions II

I decided to break up the questions, to try to publish a little more often. I might also save some for later. Questions and answers after the jump.

Questions I

So, already some questions! Thanks Mark and Mom. The questions and my answers are after break. As a disclaimer, which really should go in the about this blog box, all answers are to the best of my knowledge, and therefore might be a little off.

Update Schedule

So I honestly had planned on daily updates, and I do have the beginnings of a post for yesterday. However, some hard questions were asked right out of the gate, and I was distracted by other things as well. So, expect an update (a real update, not just this) sometime this afternoon. Also, there's apparently an issue with the comments system. So, I'll work on fixing that.

Investigating the Proton's Spin

So, what am I working on this summer? Why, some component projects in a much larger effort to explore what makes up the spin of the proton.

Mission: Science Talk

Hi guys,

I guess I should explain why I'm starting this blog. I'm an undergraduate researcher in particle physics, and I absolutely love it. Yesterday, I posted a result from my work that had me bouncing off the walls ("Might have found a bump in some backgrounds that corresponds to the kaon's mass :D Next question, is it statistical?") to my Facebook page. I was kind of sad by the first response: my brother, a soon-to-be college freshman, pointing out that he had no clue what something like that meant ("‎... i hate you and ur scientific talk xD jk but can u put this in laymans terms if ur goign to put it on fb"). 

And today, I got thinking, why can't someone try to explain for a general lay audience what's going on in particle physics? Really, there's not a good reason we can't try. Yeah, a lot of stuff is kind of technical, but if you start far enough back in the basics, you can give at least a qualitative feel for how stuff works in particle/nuclear physics. 

So that's what this blog is for. I know no one's reading it yet, but if/when people start reading it, I'd love to answer questions about the news in particle physics. In the near future, this blog will likely focus on what I'm doing and what it actually means. If anyone has any questions, I'd love to answer them. So, start emailing and commenting :D.