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this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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Physics is a mixed bag with this stuff. Gell-Mann came up with the name quarks after a line from Finnegan's Wake because Joyce referenced them as coming in three. It was a nonsense word inserted just to rhyme with Mark, Park, etc, so its pronunciation in physics isn't even correct, but it was fun and physicists were just having a good time with it.
Then we got the strange/charm and top/bottom (which was originally the beauty/truth, so bullet dodged there) so the quarks really got all the fun names. Strong Force physics in general gets the good stuff: Axions were named after a detergent because they helped "clean up" the strong CP-violation problem of the standard model. Fantastic, no notes.
Neutrinos (my field of study), had so much potential for fun, stupid naming that was squandered. The neutrino was originally proposed with the name "neutron" by Pauli, but then the actual neutron was discovered and observed first, so the name got pinched. To remedy this, the electron neutrino was dubbed "neutrino" or little neutron (they didn't know that other flavors of neutrino existed). Meanwhile, the muon neutrino was originally supposed to be the neutretto (before they realized that the neutral leptons were related by the different particle generations), so we could have had a world where each generation of neutral lepton was just another combination of neutron + diminutive italian suffix.
Then, when the mass eigenstates were confirmed, we could have diversified and gone with big suffixes to indicate that neutrinos have mass.
But noooooo, particle physics decided to just give neutrinos the lamest possible names, electron/muon/tau neutrinos for flavor states and m_1/m_2/m_3 neutrino for mass states. I am ashamed of my predecessors for what they've done.
Don't even get me started on the J/Psi debacle...
The time derivative of position is velocity. The derivative of velocity is acceleration. Derive again and you get jerk. Then it's snap, crackle and pop.
(For those too young, these are the names of those characters they use to sell Rice Krispies)
TIL I've pronounced quark wrong my whole life (rhyming with park).
Though I've heard it done that way elsewhere - perhaps it is also considered acceptable at this point.
You need it to make the quantum duck joke. Quark quark.
Waitwhat.
Gell-Mann said it sounds like "quart", Joyce rhymed it with Park, it is a silly word and the pronunciation is as fluid as you desire.
Chromodynamics just uses colors, but makes up for that simplicity by introducing anti-colors.
That sounds delicious.
Neutrello sounds good, but it is actually pretty...
weak
Rimshot, crowd moans
Wait, how is "quark" supposed to be pronounced? Not like the Star Trek character or the German cheese?
I pronounce it with the a sound I'd use in "warp".
In physics- Like "quart" with a k In the Joyce novel- rhymes with park.
I pronounce it like cork with a w
"Work?"
Kw(schwa)rk
"Quirk?"
Apparently it rhymes with spork
Kinda yeah, though with the a-schwa transformation not quite complete. As I describe this I’m realizing it may be influenced by my accent which is similar to the tv American accent but with a bunch of dropped sounds.
My favourite is the barn. Hmm what should we call this 10^-28 m^2 cross sectional area? Ten times less than a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a square metre. Hur hurr wow it's so BIG it's like hitting a barn door, let's call it a barn.
So... It seems that you feel let down by your predecessors in physics' inability to tell the future... Hunh. Odd, that.