6-30-06 Strange Quarks

I once worked for a company that manufactured tape backup drives. One of the officers of the company was a very interesting fellow with a doctorate in chemistry, and whose major function appeared to be something along the lines of "Chief Explainer". His official title was "Chief Scientist". He would, among other things, be sent in to analyze technical problems. One instance of a technical problem cropped up in the test area where I worked. From time to time, a drive being tested would simply "die". The EEprom that ran the firmware would, essentially, "die" for no apparent reason. The good doctor spent several days looking at this sporadic problem. It occured to me one day that the motor drive belt might be generating static electricity, which would discharge at unpredictable times, causing the failures. I suggested this to him, and we acquired a piece of gear that would measure static charge. Sure enough, the area around the drive belt was showing huge static fields. The solution was then simple, ie- ground (or detach from ground) the pulleys so that the drive wouldn't behave like a Van De Graf generator.

After this episode, the good doctor would come around from time to time and chat. On one such occasion, I mentioned having read one of Richard Feynman's books, and we were off into the ozone talking about particle physics. At one point I suggested to him that quarks were probably something akin to a "ridge", being a remnant from the collision of two opposing vectors. This was something that I had visualized while reading Feynman, some sort of residual and persistant standing wave type of thing.

The good doctor (I wish I could remember his name) stood agape for a moment, then asked me if I realized how profound that was.

I did not. I still don't. To this day, I'm still puzzled by his reaction.

At any rate, I continue to chase around for news of discoveries in the field of particle physics, hoping that someday someone will come up with an easily understood explanation of what a quark really is.

Here's some recent news...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060630083845.htm

And there are so many types of quarks... up and down quarks, weak isospin doublets of six flavors (up, charm, top, down, strange, and bottom), and they have baryon numbers, vanishing lepton numbers, and fractional charge... It's all so baffling.