Quantum physics terms

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This page is intended to give very short explanations of various quantum physics terms encountered elsewhere on the site. Editors are encouraged to add terms, references or links to other pages on RationalWiki where information is expanded. Please don't expand entries — if you can, make a full article & link to it.

1 Quark
2 Spin
3 Forces
4 Wave Function
5 Hamiltonian
6 See Also

[edit] Quark

Quarks are the hypothesized building blocks of subatomic particles. There are six "flavours" of quark: up, down, strange, charm, bottom & top. Each of these has an additional property "colour": red or green or blue. (These flavours and colours have no relation to any macro scale property of the same name.) A proton is made of three quarks, 2 up & 1 down, and a neutron has 2 down and one up.

[edit] Spin

Spin is a quantized property of all particles, both matter and force, in the universe. Matter particles have half-integer spin (1/2, 3/2,...) and force particles integer spin (0, 1, 2,...). Spin is intrinsic angular momentum possessed by the particles. The spin of a particle is sort of analogous to that of a spinning top, except that the particle can only spin at one speed, can't stop or even slow down, and is infinitesimally small (the particles are "pointlike" and have no size).

[edit] Forces

There are four classes of force in the universe, from weakest to strongest:

Gravitational; All^{[citation needed]} current theories of quantum gravity hypothesise the force to be carried by gravitons of spin 2 and mass 0. They have never been observed in experiment.
Electromagnetic; carried by photons of spin 1 and mass 0.
Weak Nuclear; carried by W⁺, W^- and Z⁰ of spin 1 and mass circa 100 GeV (100,1000,000,000 electron volts) (these three forces are believed to be differing manifestations of one particle.)
Strong Nuclear; carried by gluons of spin 1 and mass 0.

[edit] Wave Function

A wave function is a mathematical description of the probability wave of a particle (usually sinusoidal or exponential in form), which contains all^{[citation needed]} of the particle's information.

[edit] Hamiltonian

The operator (which this particular RW editor does not know how to enter properly), which, when operating upon a wave function, gives its energy. It hath been googled & is still mysterious beyond the intellect of normal human reasoning. IMHO