The Particle Zoo – Gift Idea for a Physicist

// December 10th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Just for Fun, Science Art

I came across this cool gift for a physicist, or anyone, because they are totally geeky and super cute.

Squee!

The Particle Zoo have soft quarks, leptons, nucleons, and theoreticals like the Higgs Boson and the Tachyon (which in the X-Files made time-travel possible!). PLUS they have the same range in antiparticles, which are kept on a seperate page to prevent mutual annihilation. They also have a pack for beta decay with a neutron that turns inside out to reveal a proton, and releases an electron, an electron anti-neutrino and a W-Boson.

It’s the attention to detail that really gets me, they are all weighted according to the particle weight, they all have neat stuff, like the W-boson is two sided, one positive (W+) and one negative (W-). For Christmas you can get mini-versions on ribbon as Christmas Decorations – nothing says I’m a massive physics geek than a Christmas tree spotted with quarks.

I think I’ve learned more about particle physics by searching this site than I did after year 12 physics. That wouldn’t be hard though.

Shout out to the physicisits in da house

// November 29th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // How Things Work, Just for Fun

Not for the first time I am posting a rap video. Rap is apparently the best genre of musical art for scientific communication, perhaps because it can handle an excess of long words.

This one is about the Large Hadron Collider, and it is catchy-as! Sadly I am not physics-minded, so I’m still a bit befuzzled about the whole thing.

Nothing like a good rap to wake you up in the morning. It’s definitely better than a kick in the head.