Quarks – EthnoPhysics

Quarks are particles made from pairs of elementary seeds. But why bother with even more tiny particles? Well, consider some repetitive chain of events noted by $\Psi$ . Earlier we gave an example of $\Psi$ as a simple movie loop called the Almost-Dead March. That story was dull, so here is a more detailed example called the March to a Better Tomorrow. It begins with a terrible battle, there was blood everywhere. Unfortunately, our protagonists lost and had to retreat. There was a long march back to safer ground; left, right, left, right … up into the mountains … left, right, left right. It was freezing, and the marchers were almost dead. But then the sun came out, it warmed up, spirits rose and they continued on. We can make a mathematical version of this brief storyline as follows. The slog through bloody battle can be represented by associating a red sensation with each step, so the first couple of events are

$\mathsf{P}_{1} =$

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and

$\mathsf{P}_{2} =$

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These two steps are bundled together

$\mathsf{\Omega} = ( \mathsf{P}_{1} , \mathsf{P}_{2} ) =$

(

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)

And then repeated over and over again to express battle sequences as $\left( \sf{\Omega}_{1} , \, \sf{\Omega}_{2} , \, \sf{\Omega}_{3} \; \ldots \; \right)$ . Similarly, the long freezing march through the mountains could be represented by

$\mathsf{\Omega}^{'} =$

(

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)

And when it warms up, the march might be described as

$\mathsf{\Omega}^{''} =$

(

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)

Overall we can make a crude representation of the movie with just a beginning, middle and ending as

$\Psi = \left( \mathsf{\Omega}_{1}, \, \mathsf{\Omega}_{2} \; \ldots \; \mathsf{\Omega}^{\prime}_{\mathit{j}}, \, \mathsf{\Omega}^{\prime}_{\mathit{j} + \mathsf{1}} \; \ldots \; \mathsf{\Omega}^{\prime \prime}_{\mathit{k}}, \, \mathsf{\Omega}^{\prime \prime}_{\mathit{k}+ \mathsf{1}} \; \ldots \right)$

This mathematical portrayal is getting complicated even though it conveys much less information than the storyline. So to simplify we define a new class of particles that are combinations of conjugate seeds and thermodynamic seeds. For example let

$\equiv$

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and

$\equiv$

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Then the events of battle can be represented using half as many particles. We can write

$\mathsf{\Omega} =$

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instead of

$\mathsf{\Omega} =$

(

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Reducing the number of particles by a factor of two is a big simplification, and we intend to use it a lot. So we give special names to these new particles, the enduring union of a conjugate seed and a thermodynamic seed is called a thermodynamic quark. These quarks are symbolized using lower-case Roman letters without serifs, and they are named after their thermodynamic seeds. Thus quarks are objectified from pairs of Anaxagorean sensations. Objectification changes narrative forms of description from using adjectives to identify sensations, to using nouns for identifying particles. For example, we may report detecting an top-quark instead of feeling a burning sensation on the right side. There are twenty thermodynamic quarks, as defined in the table below.

Thermodynamic Quarks

burning sensation on the right

→

top quark

burning sensation on the left

→

top anti-quark

freezing sensation on the right

→

bottom quark

freezing sensation on the left

→

bottom anti-quark

cool sensation on the right

→

strange quark

cool sensation on the left

→

strange anti-quark

warm sensation on the right

→

charmed quark

warm sensation on the left

→

charmed anti-quark

white sensation on the right

→

up quark

white sensation on the left

→

up anti-quark

black sensation on the right

→

down quark

black sensation on the left

→

down anti-quark

yellow sensation on the right

→

negative quark

yellow sensation on the left

→

negative anti-quark

blue sensation on the right

→

positive quark

blue sensation on the left

→

positive anti-quark

green sensation on the right

→

northern quark

green sensation on the left

→

northern anti-quark

red sensation on the right

→

southern quark

red sensation on the left

→

southern anti-quark

Anaxagorean sensations and quarks are like these painted building-blocks.

Quarks are building-blocks we can use to describe more complicated sensations. If you imagine the grey conjugate seeds as the basic building-blocks for these marching scenarios, then the quarks are like painted blocks. Descriptions made using quarks hide complexity, and they are more succinct. But these compressed reports are still useful because our bodies are bilateral so many sensations are directly experienced with strong left and right-side associations. For example, we usually see with binocular vision, and hear in stereo. So dropping seeds in favor of quarks does not lose too much precision. Thus we exploit a common symmetric feature of human experience to simplify our descriptive method. Next we discuss how to aggregate quarks into larger physical particles.