I couldn’t tell exactly when this thing happened, but it was during Covid-19, all my plan was postponed, the world slowed down, and my velocity nearly stopped. I wasn’t a fan of motivational books, quotes, or whatever, it sounds like bullshit. But someday I was surfing on Twitter and found a thread saying “If we want to reach our goals, we need to focus on tiny habits we do every day. We need to make a daily goal to pursue our dream. Discipline and consistency are the keys” very basic, right? But the thing about dreams, I have a lot of them. Be a meteorologist, world traveler, and photographer (oke, it’s just three). I love science, and yes I had a bad score in high school, still, science is fantastic, just realize this when I was in my sophomore year as an accounting student (a condition forced me to do this). If I can turn back time, I will sacrifice everything to apply as a meteorology or environmental science student, but it was impossible and I have to move on. So I gave up meteorology, re-think what I wanted to do with my life, trying to find my purpose, the reason why I live in this world.
Seeing the world from all perspectives has always been my purpose, however, it was too abstract and too broad. So I made a conclusion, all perspectives of the world mean:
- In science perspective (I’m gonna use the meteorology & geology approach)
- From a social perspective (I’m gonna use the Economy & Psychology approach)
- From a visual perspective (Photography is a perfect choice for this)
My first approach to science was learning fundamental particles (quark, lepton, boson). It started with fundamental particles — fundamental forces — molecules — chemistry — physics — further to meteorology and geology. I save biology for later.
When I was a child, I believe that the atom is the smallest thing in the world. Even forgot about protons, neutrons, or electrons. Until I found out the fundamental particle. Fundamental means the particle is not composed of other particles. It is divided into two groups, fermion (quark and lepton) and boson.
- Fermion (quark & lepton)
Fermion is a building block of matter. As we all know, an atom is contain proton, neutron, and electron. Proton is built by two quark up up down, neutron with quark up down down, meanwhile electron is a part of lepton.
There are 6 types of quarks but the most common ones found in nature are only up and down quarks, both of which are also the weakest quarks. While other quarks can only be obtained from collisions involving high energy such as cosmic rays and particle accelerators.
Quarks combine to form composite particles called Hadrons, there are two types of Hadrons:
- Baryons = 3 quarks (e.g proton and neutron)
- Mesons = 1 quark, 1 anti-quark
As for lepton I still have a lot of questions, all lepton has its anti-lepton, hmm just note electron is a part of lepton, let’s move on.
Quark is affected by all fundamental forces (strong nuclear, weak nuclear, electromagnetic, and gravity). Quark is the only thing affected by strong nuclear forces. On the other hand, Lepton is only affected by three fundamental forces (weak nuclear, electromagnetic, and gravity).
2. Boson
Boson is all the force carrier particles. If fermion is a building block of matter, boson is a building block of forces. Each of the four fundamental forces has one boson
- Gluon comes from the word glue, gluon is a particle that carries a strong nuclear force, which is the glue between quarks. Hadrons can be created because of the presence of gluons
- W and Z Bosons are carriers of weak nuclear forces, for example, can turn neutrons into protons because the down quarks turn into ups
- Photons are particles that carry electromagnetic force. Has the nature of wave-particle dualism. It has no mass and travels at the speed of light
- Gravitons are particles that carry the force of gravity, which until now is still a hypothesis, there is no complete theory about gravitons
I’m not an expert, so I won’t explain any further, you can read the full explanation in textbooks, google, and other trusted sources. By understanding particle fundamentals it is easier to understand the matter, fundamental forces, and science in general. This is the reason why I didn’t jump straight to meteorology, instead start slow from the basics. However, it acquired a lot of time and energy, I still have 8 hrs job and some other things to do. During my journey in learning science, I bought my first camera, learn photography, science, work for 8 hrs, and applied to a stock market course. Did all of that every day, I had burnout and went to a psychologist for the first time. I decided to stop learning science, not that I give up, but there was something more urgent at that moment. But no worries, I’ll be back with fundamental forces, Higgs boson, or light!!
