ATOMS, their particles, and the string theory?

Question

I get thinking harder and harder on science every time I don't understand something. AND do, elements are made out of atoms, which consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons... BUT, what makes up them? What makes an electon's mass so much smaller than a proton's mass? WHAT IS the string theory

Answer 1

. The most successful theory (meaning that is has done the best job of making predicitons which turn out to be pbserved) says that protons and neutron are made of triplets of quarks, three quarks to a proton, three quarks to a neutron. I think electrons are made of a quark and an anti-quark. I could be wrong about that, and I am not going to look it up.
. Matter can interact with other matter through any of four forces, the electromagnetic, the gravitational, the electro-weak and the strong force. Matter which is massive interacts relativley strongly through the gravitational force. Matter which does not interact strongly through the gravitational force appears to be gravitationally neutral. Why mass and strength of gravitational interaction are linked is not well known.
. String theory began when a theorist noticed the resemblance between equations used to describe a particular particle and the equations used to define the vibration of strings. It has since been used to make predictions about physical properties. As such, it is not so much a theory as a mathmatical technique. It makes too many predicitons which are testable and nearly none which are not more straightforward by other mathmatical techniques.

Answer 2

String theory is tough, at least for me. I read a book called the elegant universe that started out saying that the current basic building blocks (neutrons, protons, electrons, photons, muons, gluons, etc., etc.) are too complex and that we can make things MUCH simpler by assuming that all particles are simply strings that look like little loops and wiggle differently from each other. THEN it gets complex; 11 curled-up dimensions to begin with. I thought it was tougher than our conventional way of explaining things.

Next I'm going to try to watch the PBS series on-line:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html
but by the time I finish this question will be long closed!

Answer 3

Protons and Neutrons are made up of Quarks. The String Theory basically says that everything is made of superstrings and that particles are determined by the frequency the strings vibrate. Hope this helps.

Answer 4

The things that make up protons are named quarks.There are at least 6 different types and 3 make up a proton, and there are the gluons that keep them together.I'm not a phisicist, I've only been reading Stephen Hawking's book the Brief history of time from the Big Bang to Black Holes.It's fun.

Answer 5

the particles that make up protons and neutrons are cALLED QUARKs.. and string theory explains even further where quarks are made up of these vibrating multi-dimensional strings.. The frequency of the vibrations determine the type of matter it is or energy even.

Answer 6

Uhh ermm, it takes a couple decades of diligent study in physics and mathematics to fully understand it, and I make no claim to fully understand string theory myself. Most basically, string theory proposes (but has NOT proven, despite impressive theoretical models) that all of what makes matter, energy, and spacetime can be expressed at the smallest level as vibrations of "strings," which themselves vary in shape and other properties.

Is there a physicist in da house?

Answer 7

11 dimensional string theory has not produced anything.

It is possible that the 7 dimensions of space that are not perceived are mathematical deception, and therefore string theory is a theory of nothing, as you will find if you read the wikipedia article on string theory all the way to the end.