- #1
- 29,304
- 7,056
The A level book that AS students have for the AQA course has a Feynman diagram of a proton decaying into a neutron - via a W boson, producing a beta+ and a neutrino.
afaiaa, protons have a lifetime of 1033 years, so this doesn't seem a likely event. Is this just a 'fictional' event, put in the book to show symmetry with beta- decay of a neutron or is there something else involved? If some energy is added to make it happen (i.e. whilst the proton is in a nucleus), how come it isn't shown in the Feynman diagram, in some way?
All this stuff was found out twenty years after I started at Uni and general reading doesn't always help a chap with questions like this.
I must say, subjecting kids to this sort of thing, only months after they staggered through a skimpy GCSE Science course, seems pointless. They get presented with this even before the Photoelectric effect, the definition of the Electron Volt and Equations of motion!
Am I just a dinosaur or what? (None of them seem to understand it either)
afaiaa, protons have a lifetime of 1033 years, so this doesn't seem a likely event. Is this just a 'fictional' event, put in the book to show symmetry with beta- decay of a neutron or is there something else involved? If some energy is added to make it happen (i.e. whilst the proton is in a nucleus), how come it isn't shown in the Feynman diagram, in some way?
All this stuff was found out twenty years after I started at Uni and general reading doesn't always help a chap with questions like this.
I must say, subjecting kids to this sort of thing, only months after they staggered through a skimpy GCSE Science course, seems pointless. They get presented with this even before the Photoelectric effect, the definition of the Electron Volt and Equations of motion!
Am I just a dinosaur or what? (None of them seem to understand it either)