Back to Teaching
After yesterday’s holiday it was back to teaching full-time this morning with the first lecture of my module on Particle Physics. I just about managed to get everything ready in time for the teaching session at 1pm which, because it was an introductory lecture with lots of pictures, I decided to do via powerpoint rather than my usual chalk-and-talk. That didn’t get off to a very good start because the podium PC in my room had decided to do a Windows update just before I started and I had to wait for that to finish before I could show my slides. I suppose that happened because this was the first day of teaching after a lengthy break so nobody had used the room recently.
Most of the lecture was devoted to introducing natural units, which I intend to use throughout the module, like I have on previous occasions I have taught this sort of material for reasons I explained here. The last time I taught particle physics was some 15 years ago, so I had to update some things, especially the picture of the components of the standard model to include the Higgs. After extensive research (by which I mean looking at wikipedia) I found the above; the Higgs is on the right. Unfortunately the particle masses – which reveal themselves if you click on the image above – are not given in natural units, but have pesky factors of c-squared in them. You can’t have everything.
The bit I’m looking forward to most is doing the Dirac Equation which, years ago when I was at Sussex, was once the subject of a cake:
That particular cake was a lemon drizzle cake which unfortunately is not one of the flavours represented in the standard model.
#DiracEquation #MaynoothUniversity #NaturalUnits #ParticlePhysics
