It's very helpful to use natural units (or QCD units) when working with particle physics. Set the speed of light, the reduced Planck's constant, and Boltzmann's constant equal to 1. For QCD units also set the mass of the proton equal to 1. Then compute all the other units based on this. (There are several other systems of "natural" units also in use. All of them set the speed of light to 1, but differ in what other units are included.)<p>A particular advantage to intuition comes with the famous e=mc^2. Since c is 1, and 1^2 is 1, e=m. Energy and mass are completely equivalent. Strong force binding energy in a proton is mass. The only bit that's not straight from binding energy is from the Higgs mechanism, which is where the mass of the electron (and the quarks themselves) comes from. Matt Strassler has an excellent explanation of that: <a href="https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/how-the-higgs-field-works-with-math/" rel="nofollow">https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-ph...</a>
I love reading about quantum mechanics at all different levels, and have read and appreciated articles well beyond what I could properly comprehend in fullness; but <i>man</i> was this article all over the place.<p>I've never seen an author use metaphors or similies so poorly before. To draw parallels between something hard to grasp and something made up and vaguely defined in an effort to explain the former is.. ill advised at best. Then there's the fact that the author spends forever to explain basic chemistry then jumps into color charge in such a way that anyone not already intimately familiar with at least the terminology of quantum physics would never be able to understand, then the author jumps from topic to topic seemingly in a race to drop references to as many different concepts as possible without actually explaining any of them, almost like a student writing an essay then going back and swapping words with a thesaurus to seem better informed.<p>Even the science aside, the writing itself is rather atrocious. The author "answers" mysteries he never even asked or previously posed, and expects readers to already know what he's trying to say so he can refer to that in his explanations of why he said it.<p>Then the author has a tendency to jump from field to field, converting apples into oranges with the help of a long-dead scientist only so he can add them together in the most basic way and then convert them back to apples again. But he got to prove that he knows of Avagdro, so obviously there's that.<p>Usually Nautilus articles are written much better than this. If you value your sanity or actually care to understand the topic discussed, do yourself a favor and look elsewhere.
For some reason people are still caught up in finding some difference between mass and energy.<p>There is no difference. They are two words that mean the same thing.<p>There are different <i>kinds</i> of mass-energy, some types are easy to convert into others, some types move at the speed of light, some don't. But there is nothing distinguishing mass from energy.<p>It was a revelation to see photons attracted by gravity - but once you realize it's energy that has a gravitational field [not just the particles we call mass], it would be surprising if photons were not attracted by gravity. (Although photons moving only at the speed of light have different equations governing their motion under acceleration.)<p>Now, all that said,<p>There is a distinction between things that only move at the speed of light, and things that never do. But the words energy and mass [as commonly used] do not properly fit those two categories.
I was just explaining to my teenage son what quarks are -- he hadn't learned about them yet. So I have to upvote this.<p>tl;dr If you decompose matter all the way down, mass doesn't just "add up the parts to the whole". Not by several orders of magnitude!
Veritasium had a video explaining this a few years back, it's one of the videos responsible for sparking my interest in physics and cosmology.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztc6QPNUqls&feature=youtu.be&t=4m47s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztc6QPNUqls&feature=youtu.be...</a>
I would rather describe as a very weak, long-ranging, attracting force.<p>A force of a very special kind, because all other forces are strong, short-ranging (they need to interact, the only not-mechanical force) and repelling.
"But what is matter, exactly? Imagine a cube of ice, measuring a little over one inch (or 2.7 centimeters) in length."<p>Gasping. For. Air.<p>I love that an article on units gets a unit conversion massively wrong.
The conclusion that energy is more fundamental or easier to have an intuition for has been the case since, what 100 years ago? It certainly was when I studied physics 20 years ago.<p>But he doesn't need to go into quarks for that. Simply comparing the masses of protons and neutrons (+ electrons) to the mass of an atom shows they're different. There's a little bit less mass due to the lower energy of the bound nucleons. Quarks certainly make the effect more dramatic though.<p>A more practical objection to using mass is that nobody can agree on what the word means. Does a photon have mass? Yes or no, depending on if you're thinking of relativistic or rest mass. If you call it energy, there's no ambiguity.<p>If I could recommend he change anything though, it would be the horrible mixture of units - MeV/c^2, atomic mass units, and grams. The author surely has the time to convert them all to the same unit so the reader can easily compare them. That would eliminate the need to explain Avogadro's law. It's a completely redundant complication of chemistry and has nothing to do with the fundamental concepts he's focusing on.