Neutrino
From ZuluNotes - Free Leaving Cert Notes
Discovery
- In any reaction, energy and momentum must be conserved.
- When studying beta decay, energy and momentum did not appear to be conserved.
- Therefore, a new particle called a neutrino was proposed by Wolfgang Pauli.
- A neutrino has very small mass and no charge.
- It has since been detected experimentally by Cowan and Reines.
- All neutrinos have antiparticles.
Cosmic Gall
NEUTRINOS, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
and painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
and pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed-you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.
- Telephone Poles and Other Poems, John Updike, Knopf, 1960
