Fun Fact #371 The Particle Zoo

 Fun Fact #371 

Welcome to The Particle Zoo 

In the 1950s and 60s scientists studying Atomic particle collisions were finding hundreds of strongly reactive particles known as Hadrons. There were two main problems here. The lesser one was it got the scientists excited since they could name things and so increasingly sought more powerful collisions. Second was the fact that they were discovering things faster than they could be classified and so they wrote on a chart of the animal kingdom assigning research teams kingdoms and particles to animals to classify quickly and give temporary names to Hadons while they figured things out –calling it “The Particle Zoo”. 

After the discovery of quarks, they would go back and reorganize this chart according to the quark structures which build all Hadrons. Yet the name “Particle Zoo” has stuck around as a colloquial term for the now extensive last of subatomic particles in the field of Particle Physics. 

Also yes, I chose this week’s topic purely so I could point out that you can make animal jokes and technically be true (Party animal, blind as a bat, etc). . . if this were the 60s that is. Come winter please walk like a penguin everyone. Apparently you’ve got plenty of penguins to spare.