2006-10-03 11:15:06 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
not what the name suggests, and nobody really knows...
"elementary" means "this is the ultimate Stuff that things are made of, you can't break these down any further, this is as titchy as things get".
For a while atoms were thought to be elementary (hence the periodic table of "the elements"). Then Rutherford and Bohr sneaked in and found they were made of littler things: electrons, protons and neutrons. Nothing to split those into, right?
Wrong; quarks. And on it went. Now we're spending billions looking for one of the littlest yet: the Higgs Boson. It won't stop there.
You can't investigate down to that level by purely physical means, you need to do really painfull maths. And those who are good at sums have already postulated even smaller things - "strings" - of which all matter is thought to be made. String theory suggests that all matter is ultimately made of... energy.
Which is what Einstein figured out a hundred years ago. And he disapproved of elementary particles, or at least of the stuff they get up to. Funny that it all came round full circle and we find that elementary particles are actually nothing at all. Just like everything else. Weird.
2006-10-03 11:24:38 · answer #1 · answered by wild_eep 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The ultimate, smallest elementary particle is now considered to be loops and strands of vibrating STRING. It would take
100,000,000,000,000,000,000 of these strings to stretch across the diameter of a proton. The proton was once thought to be an elementary particle. But you will probably ask what is a string? Well, strings must be 10 dimensional pieces of space-time arranged so that only four dimensions are visible. I am sure that doesn't help! Anyway, strings make gluons, quarks etc. etc.
2006-10-04 04:17:59 · answer #2 · answered by RATTY 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
'Wild eep' is absolutely correct.
The Hindus have gone on to say that the Universe is an illusion.
Some truth in that.
Hinduism based on the Vedas, discovered some 5000 years ago have names for all particles.
To name a few:-
Western Names Vedics Names
Electron ------------------- Varuna
Proton --------------------- Mitra
Neutron ------------------- Aryama
Nucleus ------------------- Vasistha
Boson --------------------- Gramya
Fermion ------------------- Aranya
The Russians and German scientists have based a lot of their research on this. It has been a trade secret so far.
Was it not mostly scientists who escaped from Germany that worked on the first atomic weapon?
Now you too can read about Vedic Physics in a book of the same name by Raja Ram Mohan Roy Ph.D.
ISBN No. 0-9684120-0-9
2006-10-04 05:20:34 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Elementary particles are particles which cannot be further broken down. They categorized as either fermions (quarks and leptons) or bosons.
2006-10-03 18:17:42 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
They are particles that haven`t been to high school yet!
2006-10-03 18:22:40 · answer #5 · answered by Jotun 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Children in a playground that keep on bumping into each others.
2006-10-03 18:22:39 · answer #6 · answered by Gurpz 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
See websites bellow.
2006-10-03 18:24:53 · answer #7 · answered by frank 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋