Boson Buddies Trivia Quiz

Answer: India

The boson was named after Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974), a mathematician and physicist from India. He was born in the city of Calcutta (aka Kolkata), while India was under British rule. Satyendra Nath Bose formed a working relationship with famous German scientist Albert Einstein. During the mid 1920's, the two scientists came up with theories, equations and statistics that help describe the nature of bosons.

Answer: Standard Model

The Standard Model of particle physics is a theory that attempts to link three of the four known physical forces together. These three forces include the electromagnetic force, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force. The term "Standard Model" was first coined by Abraham Pais and Sam Treiman in 1975.

Answer: France

The Large Hadron Collider became the largest machine in the world when it was completed in 2008. It was constructed by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (aka CERN). The Large Hadron Collider has a diameter of 27 km (17 miles) and is located underground on the France-Switzerland border approximately 8 km (5 miles) from the city of Geneva, Switzerland.

Answer: fermions

While bosons are subatomic particles with spins measured at whole integers, fermions are elementary subatomic particles that have quantum spins measured as half integers. Fermions include all quarks (up, down, etc.) and leptons, which electrons are classified as. The term fermion was named for Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi (1901-1954).

Answer: gauge bosons

A gauge boson is defined as a force carrier. All gauge bosons are measured to have a spin number of one. Gauge bosons are also known as vector bosons. There is at least one boson that represents one of the three forces of the Standard Model (the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force).

Answer: gluon

Gluons are massless gauge bosons that are associated with the strong nuclear force. The strong force is responsible for binding together fundamental particles of matter to form larger particles. Gluons were first observed in 1979 by a team of scientists from DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) a research station based in Hamburg, Germany, using a machine known as PETRA (Positron-Electron Tandem Ring Accelerator).

Answer: gamma

Photons are massless gauge bosons that are associated with the electromagnetic force. Mankind has felt the existence of photons since our ancestors first stepped into the sunlight. The photon itself (aka particle of light or light quantum) was theorized by Albert Einstein in 1905 and the word photon was coined by American scientist Gilbert N. Lewis in 1926.

In equations, the photon is symbolized by a lower case gamma.

Answer: W & Z

The W and Z bosons are both gauge bosons that are associated with the weak nuclear force and both bosons were observed to have mass. The weak force is believed to be responsible for the radioactive decay of atoms. Both particles were discovered by scientists at CERN using the SPS (Super Proton Synchrotron) located in the same research center as the Large Hadron Collider.

The W boson was the first to be discovered in January, 1983. The Z boson was discovered several months later. A W boson can exhibit either a positive or negative electrical charge, while a Z boson is electrically neutral.

Answer: graviton

A graviton is a hypothetical boson that is theorized to represent the force of gravity. It is known as a tensor boson as gravitons are believed to have a spin number of 2. The term graviton was originally coined in 1934 by Soviet physicists Dmitrii Blokhintsev and F.M. Gal'perin. Gravitons and the force of gravity are not considered to be part of the Standard Model.

Answer: Peter Higgs

In 2012, the Higgs boson (aka God particle) was discovered by CERN using the Large Hadron Collider. The Higgs boson is considered a massless scalar boson, which has a spin number of zero. It is believed that the Higgs boson is responsible for the Higgs field, a hypothetical force that generates mass when it interacts with other subatomic particles. British scientist Peter Higgs first developed theories about the particle in 1964.

He was given a Nobel prize in 2013 following the discovery of the Higgs boson.