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Articles: My Thoughts | In quest of Infinity-06
- Prof. venkata ramanamurty mallajosyula
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Let us suppose that matter is continuous. Take a piece of matter like iron rod, say 1 cm diameter and 10 centimetres long. Cut it in the middle. We would then get two pieces each 5 cm long. Take one piece and cut that; this time the pieces would be 2.5 cm. Keep doing this on and on. As you do so, the pieces would get thinner and thinner and thinner. In principle, there should be no limit, because since matter is supposed to be continuous, the slices cut can be indefinitely thin.
Suppose now matter is made up of atoms that are like infinitely hard spheres; that is to say an individual atom simply cannot be cut. If the above slicing process is gone through, then in this case, one would eventually come to a slice that is one atom layer thick; that is the limit and one cannot under the assumption of an indestructible atom, go any further.
As I told you, by the beginning of the 20th century, physicists not only knew that matter was made up of atoms but also that electrons could be knocked off atoms; that meant that the atom could be broken up; in turn that meant that one must now start looking for building blocks that are smaller than the atom.
The atom, as I told you earlier, is made up of a central atomic nucleus and a whole bunch of electrons orbiting around it. Can the nucleus be broken up? That was possible; so that meant that something smaller than the nucleus was required for making an atom, apart from electrons of course. What was the nucleus made up of? That, physicists found, was made up of protons and neutrons. Does that mean all matter, from the ant and the elephant all the way to galaxies are made up of just electrons, protons and neutrons? Do these three particle types constitute the basic building blocks of matter? Not quite, for the proton and the neutron had internal structure of their own!
Unearthing the Twosome - Leptons and Quarks
It was a hard grind finding all this, but by 1950, physics had become a big arena with hundreds if not thousands of physicists working all over the world. So a lot of information started piling up, rather quickly, one must mention, and by 1970 or so, one could sort of say: “Well you know what? We now can be sure what the basic building blocks of matter are, and list them.” This was done, and it was found that the building blocks were of two fundamental categories; one of them was called leptons and the other was called quarks.
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