The Science Quiz | The subatomic realm

The Science Quiz appears twice a week in the daily science page. The page is available to read on all days except Saturday in the epaper.

Questions (answers at the bottom):

1. There are four fundamental forces of nature: electromagnetic, weak-nuclear, strong-nuclear, and gravitational forces. Which of these is the weakest force and by what factor of the next weakest force?

2. The ________ _____ of particle physics is the leading theory that describes three of the four fundamental forces. Fill in the blanks.

3. At a very high energy, the electromagnetic and the weak-nuclear forces unify to become the electroweak force. Sheldon Glashow, Steven Weinberg, and X shared the 1979 physics Nobel Prize for explaining this process. Name X.

4. Protons, neutrons, and electrons make up all atoms (although the hydrogen atom lacks neutrons). Protons and neutrons are in turn made of quarks and gluons. Quarks have two types of charge: electric charge and ______ ______. Fill in the blanks.

5. The Large Hadron Collider is a particle accelerator that helped confirm the existence of a particle called the Higgs boson in 2012-2013. What type of accelerator is it? The label is derived from the fact that the magnetic field guiding the particles is linked to the particles’ kinetic energy.

Visual:

(Source: CMichel67 (CC BY-SA 4.0))

This is the IceCube observatory at the earth’s south pole. Name the subatomic particles from outer space that it is designed to detect.

Answers:

1. Gravitational force, weaker than the weak-nuclear force by 10²⁴-times

2. Standard Model

3. Abdus Salam

4. Colour charge

5. Synchrotron

Visual: Neutrinos