The Quantum Quark

Fascinating and inspiring book: the story of one of the four forces controlling our universe.

Andrew Watson (Author)

9780521089838, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 November 2008

480 pages, 120 b/w illus. 7 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.7 cm, 0.7 kg

'Readers who want to find out about particle physics in the sense of current experiments may find this book helpful, as it is very readable.' Professor Frank Close, Oxford University

The world you can feel and touch is built of atoms, the smallest identifiable chunks of matter. Yet the heart of each atom is itself a whole new world, a world populated by quarks: indivisible, vanishingly small, the ultimate building blocks of our universe. This inner world where quarks reign is subject to new and unfamiliar rules, the rules of the quantum world. Colossal particle accelerators enable physicists to bring this inner world into focus, and have helped them shape a theory respectful of quantum rules that explains how quarks feel one another's presence. The Quantum Quark is the story of that theory: quantum chromodynamics.

Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. Symmetry
3. The quantum world
4. Towards QCD
5. The one number of QCD
6. The gregarious gluon
7. Quarks and hadrons
8. Quarks under the microscope
9. Much ado about nothing
10. Checkerboard QCD
Appendix 1. A QCD chronology
Appendix 2. Greek alphabet and SI prefixes
Appendix 3. Glossary
Appendix 4. Further reading
Index.

Subject Areas: Quantum physics [quantum mechanics & quantum field theory PHQ], Popular science [PDZ]