sereres.com

Well... apparantly my parents didn't really think Christmas was over... this morning when we got the box from my great grandparents in the mail Sinclair and I opened yet another present from my parents. Mine was just a slip of paper with "sereres.com" on it... my brothers had both his first and last name. But anyway, I'm happy. Will have to figure out some server to get it up on... then I dunno what I'll do with it for sure.

Well... Christmas is over.

Last night was the last "musical beds" episode here for at least awhile (I hope...) I should have my room back tonight. I'll just say that some very interesting dynamics arise when you put 12 people into a four bedroom house-- especially when six of them 11 or under. I'm still not sure of everything that went on between those kids. It was nice to get to see my aunt and her family again, but I was a little taxed by the fact that they usually live by far more conservative standards than we do, I'm still not entirely sure where one of our Christmas CD's went to (one I actually liked a lot), I hope I can find it. I just so easily see the logical holes in the argumentation given that it get's tiring to keep hearing it without actually saying anything. But for the most part I managed to keep quite and not pick a fight...

Christmas for us has kinda been split in two... This was my mom's sister's family that was visiting us, so we mostly just opened the gifts from her side of the family yesterday. This is because my dad's sister's family is currently in Costa Rica and will be celebrating with us on New Years. So we'll do Christmas from that side of the family then. And apparantly we didn't get one box of gifts from my mom's grandparents... so I'm expecting some new little knick-knack or little book sometime soon... I fear they have no idea what teenagers nowadays do all day... but who can blame them, as they're pretty close to ninety now anyway. Least they remember my name! :D

So I get a nice little break to see if I can finally get my Christmas cards out to family... (better late than never, eh? I didn't get envelopes early enough, otherwise I might have finished earlier-- at least I like to tell myself I would have).

Anyway... one of the other myriad things that I really should start thinking about is looking into and applying for some summer internship job... last year's work at Argonne was really fun, but if I can, I'd like to do something different this year. In any case, the program I used last summer only allows two times... I'd probably make better use of the second if I save it for my junior or senior year.

And I guess I could get back to reading. I have a whole bunch of things that I want to read... read the Smithsonian magazine a couple days ago-- was interesting. Had an article on old mug shots as art, pronghorn antelopes in trouble in Wyoming (they migrate, people are putting up fences around their properties that stop them). And sometime I should write here about my thoughts reading "Human All To Human" by Nietzche, which I read a couple weeks ago while I can still remember them.

And, since I really don't want to turn this into a to-do list, I should probably stop now. Till later.

Asymptotic freedom

An electron in quantom theory 'tisn't only an electron... it emits virtual photons, some of which split to electron-positron pairs. Then the positrons array themselves around the negatively charged electron "screening" some of it's negative charge from a probe. Thus... the charge of the electron increases when you measure it with a probe extremely close to the particle... at larger distances the typical charge approaches 1/137 (well... actually the fine structure constant approaches that... but that variable depends directly on the electron's charge.)

Ok.

However, when we get to the strong nuclear force (rather than the electromagnetic force), the situation changes. A given quark will emit virtual gluons... just as the electron before emitted virtual photons. So far so good. But this time, the color charge preferentially closer to the given quark will be the same, not different. So say, a red quark will be surrounded by other red charges. This increases the charge measured by a distant probe, rather than decreasing it. The closer a test probe is to the particle... the lower the charge. Thus... quarks that are very close together experience virtually no strong force... only when they begin to separate do they feel the force. This is known as asymptotic freedom.

All well and good.

BUT WHY! Why are red charges preferentially located closer to other red charges?


For that matter, why are positive charges atracted to negative charges rather than other positive charges? I wish I knew.


Btw... this post is due to the book "Quarks and Leptons: an introductory course in modern particle physics," which I am reading. I will probably post something here whenever I come across something interesting or something I don't understand... that way I'll remember my questions long enough to find the answers.

Hello World

#include stdio.h
#include stdlib.h

/*How does one get those carets not to disappear, anyway?*/

int main(void)
{

printf("Hello World");
return 0;

}


Of course, all this does is prove my great lack of originality. Oh well... perhaps I'll make up for it later. Or bore everyone stiff. We'll see. :D