Quarks and Leptons
How do you tell a quark from a Lepton?
———- from Jack Arnold of Portland, Maine
Easy. A quark is a subatomic particle, while Lepton is a type of tea. Tea can keep you up nights, and so can quarks, if you’re a physicist. That’s where the resemblance ends. Quarks have only a theoretical mass, and tea comes loose or in bags. Now if quarks came in bags, it would make a physicist’s life much easier. But quarks don’t. In the case of the quark which we call the boson, the Heisenberg principle proves that even observing the boson destroys the boson, which is not to be confused with bison. You can look at bison all day without destroying anything. Bison are large, mangy buffaloes that live in Wyoming and don’t drink tea at all.
Easy. A quark is a subatomic particle, while Lepton is a type of tea. Tea can keep you up nights, and so can quarks, if you’re a physicist. That’s where the resemblance ends. Quarks have only a theoretical mass, and tea comes loose or in bags. Now if quarks came in bags, it would make a physicist’s life much easier. But quarks don’t. In the case of the quark which we call the boson, the Heisenberg principle proves that even observing the boson destroys the boson, which is not to be confused with bison. You can look at bison all day without destroying anything. Bison are large, mangy buffaloes that live in Wyoming and don’t drink tea at all.