Why do chemists like nitrates?
They are cheaper than day rates, that's why!
The Science Joke Book is an almanac of nerdy jokes to lighten and entertain yourself. Science is treated as a serious business, but it also provides scope for humour like no...
A student asks a scientist about the types of quarks.
The scientist replies, "Up, Down, Charm, Top, Bottom."
The student says, "I think you missed one?"
The scientist replies "Umm, that's strange."
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Ready to delve into a non-technical introduction to particle physics?
A quark is an elementary particle, i.e., it is not composed of smaller particles. It is a fundamental constituent of ordinary matter, since it constitutes protons and neutrons themselves.
As you might be aware, atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons. It was once thought that all three of those were elementary particles.
After the invention of the particle accelerator, it was discovered that electrons are elementary or fundamental particles, but neutrons and protons are not. Neutrons and protons are made up of quarks, which bear fractional electric charges.
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For particle physicists, the Standard Model is the theoretical framework describing all the currently known. This model contains six types of quarks. The types are called flavours.
These flavours are: up, down, top, bottom, charm, and strange.
Up, charm and top quarks have charges of + 2/3 each, while down, strange and bottom quarks each have a charge of - 1/3.
For every quark flavor there is a corresponding type of antiparticle, known as an antiquark,
Antiquarks are identical to quarks in all respects, but some of their properties, such as electric charge, are equal in magnitude but opposite sign as that of their respective quarks.
For example, up, charm and top antiquarks have a charge of -2/3.
Down, strange and bottom antiquarks have a charge of + 1/3.
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Now, after going through this mind-bending excursion through the quirkiness of these curious little quarks, you can confidently delve into today's humorous anecdote. It is as follows:
A particle physicist met a quark collector..... and discovered the latter, named Richard, had managed to get his hands on two of the most elusive quarks - the notorious up-quark and the sought-after down-quark.
Now our physicist was a bit of a connoisseur himself, and had managed to get his hands on all the four other quarks and their anti-quarks: he caught the ever-fleeting top quark near the last base camp on the Mount Everest, had discovered the appealing charm quark in a beauty contest in Nevada, only barely managed to escape with the strange quark from a sect of occult satanists, and even built his own bathyscape to collect a bottom quark from the Mariana Trench.
He had long sought after the two remaining specimens to complete his collection, but to no avail.
So he was delighted at first, but the quark collector was not ready to part with his ornaments.
Our physicist first tried to appeal to Rich's generosity, by pleading him to give him the up-quark. He was however refused.
He then tried a different angle: he offered to hire the down quark for a short period (and an outrageous sum of money, let it be said), hoping to appeal to Rick's greed, but alas!
After weeks of pleading, begging, raging and convincing, he sent one final e-mail asking for either the top quark to be given or the down quark to be borrowed.
The next day, he received this email:
"Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down..."
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