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Protons not as “strange” as expected

• boredguy8 16y ago
  "What we now think of as the atom – consisting of a nucleus and its electrons – was first described by John Dalton in the early 1800s. Later that century, scientists found that they could strip electrons out of the atom. Then, in the early twentieth century, they found that the nucleus contained even heavier particles, which were dubbed protons and neutrons. "Fast forward to the 1960s, when theoretical physicists proposed that protons and neutrons have building blocks of their own – particles called quarks. Shortly thereafter, researchers at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory conducted experiments that demonstrated that quarks really did exist." Reading this passage I found myself struck by how glad I am to have read the Feynman Lectures on Physics in high school. He does such a great job explaining what made people ask the questions that this author presents in a "suddenly, people thought there were protons, neutrons, and quarks" manner of talking. If you haven't read Feynman's lectures, do so. I don't know that ignorance of physics has the same repercussions of, say, numeracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innumeracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innumeracy), but it certainly provides a healthy background against which to read these types of articles.