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 Originally Posted by OngBonga
I think GR interests me more than QM if I'm honest. I've been watching some particle physics lectures by Michel van Biezen on youtube and once we get to lectons and isospin all that stuff it just fries my brain. I have a hard enough time trying to figure out what the hell the weak and strong forces are. But gravity, I feel like I can follow along with GR without my head melting.
Thanks for the name drop on Michel van Biezen... I'm looking at his youtube page now. I haven't clicked a vid yet, but it looks like it's right up my alley.
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Leptons are a class of fundamental particles with isospin 1/2.
This means they are Fermions. Fermions have non-integer isospin (1/2, 3/2, 5/2, etc). Bosons have integer isospin (1, 2, 3, etc). Everything (Yes, all the things) is either a fermion, a boson or composed of fermions and/or bosons.
The important thing to know about isospin is that it is an intrinsic property of a particle. I usually talk about isospin by just calling it spin, or spin-state, but it's something you're probably familiar with.
E.g. In every electron shell, there can be up to 2 electrons. All Fermions follow the Pauli Exclusion Principle (PEP). The PEP says that no 2 fermions can be in the same state at the same time. What's going on, here?
An electron can be either in an 'up' spin state (isospin +1/2) or a 'down' spin state (isospin -1/2). So the spin state is fundamentally important to describe the energy of an electron bound in an atom.
Ultimately, the word spin is misleading, since there is no classical spinning going on. It's just a number that is attached to the particle, like the mass is just a number that's attached to the particle... or the electric charge. As such, calling it isospin is slightly less misleading.
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The weak force is electromagnetism and also the facilitating mechanism behind "low-energy" atomic changes.
In general, the weak force is what describes electrons' behavior.
The strong force is interactions between quarks, and is the dominant force holding atomic nuclei together.
In general, the strong force describes protons' and neutrons' behavior.
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I know that it's boring to study F = ma to death, but it's important that you understand the applications and implications intuitively. The higher concepts are all built on simple ideas. It's like you're trying to jump into the story in the middle of act 2 and you're a bit confuzzled over the characters and plot direction.
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