IPPOG Resources Database

l diamante

Author(s): Cacciatore, Fabiola, University Niccolo Cusano (IT)

Contact: Fabiola Cacciatore, fabiola.cacciatore@cern.ch

Submitted by: fabiola.cacciatore@cern.ch

Published: June 7, 2022

"Which particle are you?" by L. Diamante

Teacher’s notes Which particle are you? This opening, fun test introduces the name of some interesting particles that appear on the following pages of these activity sheets. The questions are related to the properties of different particles, for example, the first question of the quiz distinguishes particles that are more solitary (i.e. fermions, such as the electron). Gluons keep quarks together in the proton. Particles have no volume, but in the book they are represented with funny shapes, otherwise you could not see them. Gluons keep quarks together in the protons and are traditionally depicted by a corkscrew-line. Quarks are drawns as circles of three colours (red, blue and green). In the book, protons are repre- sented as little bumper cars, because they crash inside the detectors at CERN. Electrons and muons belong to the same family: they are represented as a paper plane and a hot air ballon respectively (to indicate that muons are more massive than electrons). The Higgs boson is quite massive (about 125 times more massive than the proton), so it’s drawn as a cruise ship.

Languages

Topics

Matter, Particles and the Universe (Known Physics)
Particles and Their Interactions

School Topics

Nature of science
Scientific inquiry and reasoning

Keywords

#studentsgame #teachersmaterial #letiziadiamante

Online use

Yes

Files