

Protons not as “strange” as expected - razerbeans
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2010/04/27/protons-not-as-strange-as-expected/

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boredguy8
"What we now think of as the atom – consisting of a nucleus and its electrons
– was first described by John Dalton in the early 1800s. Later that century,
scientists found that they could strip electrons out of the atom. Then, in the
early twentieth century, they found that the nucleus contained even heavier
particles, which were dubbed protons and neutrons.

"Fast forward to the 1960s, when theoretical physicists proposed that protons
and neutrons have building blocks of their own – particles called quarks.
Shortly thereafter, researchers at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
conducted experiments that demonstrated that quarks really did exist."

Reading this passage I found myself struck by how glad I am to have read the
Feynman Lectures on Physics in high school. He does such a great job
explaining what made people ask the questions that this author presents in a
"suddenly, people thought there were protons, neutrons, and quarks" manner of
talking. If you haven't read Feynman's lectures, do so. I don't know that
ignorance of physics has the same repercussions of, say, numeracy
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innumeracy>), but it certainly provides a
healthy background against which to read these types of articles.

