Sub-Atomic Physics and a Recipe for Shortbread Cookies (Guest blog post by Pinkie Pie) · 10:04pm Jul 12th, 2014
HELLO dear readers, this is PINKIE PIE, your Pony Friend Forever, Party Planner Extra-ordinaire, and fully qualified Nuclear Reactor Engineer. I'm writing this blog post as Pineta is away this week, which means I have a chance to tell you about sub-atomic physics and my favourite particle the neutron.
You see everything we see around us, even if it looks real solid, is actually made up of tiny particles. That's right – everything – including rocks, alligators, cupcakes, ponies, high-power electric fiber lasers – is all made up of ATOMS, and atoms are in turn made from even smaller particles: protons, neutrons, and electrons. The electrons are the little fast ones which are forever whizzing around so fast that we never know exactly where they are. They usually stay close to their protons and neutrons friends in their atomic families, but some of them go off and visit their friends in other atoms, and some go off and have wild adventures and drift from atom to atom, and this makes all sorts of fascinating chemistry and electronics, but I'm not going to talk about that as I'm a nuclear engineer and not a chemist. Chemistry is WAY too complicated for me to understand. I mean it's hard enough trying to understand the nuclear attraction between one proton and one neutron. But when you stick lots of atoms together to make big molecules – that just blows my brain! Only super clever chemistry nerds like Twilight can understand that.
Okay back to the nucleus. The protons and neutrons are bestest friends who prefer to stay at home, hugging each other tightly together in the nucleus at the heart of the atom. The neutrons are unstable particles – if they are left on their own then after about ten minutes they get so frustrated they decay into protons – but when they've got the support of their friends in the nucleus, they're happy and stable. At least most atoms are happy and stable most of the time, but sometimes things get a bit much, especially in really big atoms like uranium-235. When you have 235 friends all trying to hug you at the same time it gets a bit much. So when a new neutron arrives, the uranium atoms breaks apart into two smaller atoms and they go their separate ways. This is what allows all the exciting nuclear physics which I explain in Rock Farms and Nuclear Reactors.
And I should add that protons and neutrons are in fact made up of even smaller particles called quarks. Quarks come in six different flavours, and have all sorts of interesting friendships, but I'm not going to talk about that as I'm running out of time, and I never really understood quantum chromodynamics. So instead I'm going to finish with a recipe for shortbread cookies which you can make at home:
Weigh out about 200g of flour, 100g of butter, and 50g powdered sugar. Mix it all together really well, rubbing it together with your fore-limbs to make a good dough. Throw in some chocolate chips if you like. Roll it out and cut it into your favourite cookie shapes. Leave it for about 15 minutes, then put on a greased baking tray and put it in the oven at 200º for about 15 minutes. Wait until they are cool, then share with your friends!
Thanks Pinks! I'll have to try that recipe!
Is that Fahrenheit or Centigrade?
2278400 It's Celsius / centigrade. Pinkie is a scientist, she would never stoop to using American units
Not their nuclear families, mind you. Then the electrons wouldn't be involved at all.
I definitely empathize with Pinkie on chemical matters. I just never got into chemistry as much as physics, or even biology. Still, I'm sure she has more appreciation for mineralogy and other geochemical subdisciplines than she realizes.
As for chromodynamics, I always think of quarks as akin to Mario using a Starman; they're constantly changing color. Also, cheery music is playing, and isolated quarks are highly lethal to Goombas. Though that could just be the "beginning of the universe"-type conditions needed to keep them isolated. Eh, either or.
In any case, thanks for another tasty nugget of science.
2278400
Not much baking happens at two hundred Fahrenheit.
It's a pity I can't up vote blog posts - this was brilliant.
A recipe about nuclear physics is fun.
Do you mean the fact that they're electrically powered, Pinkie? Cuz I thought most lasers were electrically powered, but if you mean something entirely different please do tell!
And I'm sure that shortbread recipe is delicious! The best ones are the simplest.
I hear you Pinkie. Chemistry is an utterly fascinating science, but I just can't wrap my head around some of the things that go on. Still, watching copper metal spontaneously appear in a chemical solution is one of the highlights of my life.
Still, I find astrophysics much easier to grasp. Not the math of course, but the concepts.
Also cookies. Never enough cookies.
Ever.