1862: Particle Properties

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Particle Properties

Title text: Each particle also has a password which allows its properties to be changed, but the cosmic censorship hypothesis suggests we can never observe the password itself—only its secure hash.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: needs a table to explain the table (namely what do each of the properties mean) If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

A table is presented comparing the range (maxium and minimum value) and scale (how big number increments are) of several measures. The table begins by listing properties pertinent to particle physics as the title sugests, but after failing to provide a good indication of flavor, quickly devolves to other domains, such as role playing games (such as D&D) and sports.

The term "entropy", which began as a thermodynamic measure, has since been adopted by analogy into multiple seemingly unrelated domains. The table doesn't seem to know what domain it is in, but (possibly in a desperate attempt to hide this) deems it safe to assume the unknown domain uses the term "entropy" for something!

"Proof" refers to alcohol proof, which is the measure of the amount of ethanol in a beverage. In ranges from 0 to 200, with 200 proof referring to something that is 100% alcohol by volume.

The "Alignment" tab corresponds with the Alignments grid of Dungeons & Dragons, where characters are traditionally given one of nine ideological alignments, with "Lawful", "Neutral" and "Chaotic" on one axis and "Good", "Neutral" and "Evil" on the other. This may be a reference to the now defunct names of the heaviest known two quarks: truth and beauty. Hit points are a system used in many games to determine when a character dies, or is so injured that they can no longer act effectively, in D&D it is possible for a character to have negative hit points but not die.

The charge is shown in increments of a third from -1 to +1 which are the only know charges of the fundamental particles, there are some exotic, particles with twice integer charge e.g. the recently discovered double charmed Xi baryon

Mass is a scalar, all known particles have rest mass greater than or equal to zero, Tachyons are hypothetical and it is also possible to select a reference frame where the mas is greater or equal to zero.

Spin is an intrinsic properties of particles, Spin is a relativistic form of angular momentum. The spin of a particle determines what statistics the particle follows, half odd integer spin particles are classified as fermions and integer spin particles are bosons. Two fermions cannot have exactly the same state, this is the Pauli exclusion principle. Flavor is a series of quantum numbers that do not fit neatly onto a set of dimensional axis Color charge can be Red Green or Blue, the color of a particle must sum to white so a particle can be RGB or Red anti-Red or equivalent. The color charge confines the quarks, separating quarks requires so much energy that jets of particles are created, so color is a property inferred as it cannot be observed on its own. This is the last entry currently used to describe particles by particle physicists. Mood particles are not considered to have emotion but Randdal implies that there is a quantized 5 point scale which would have some effect of the properties of the particle.

Transcript

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Particle Properties in Physics

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Discussion

oh dear, they copied the alt text wrong 173.245.50.108 14:58, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

More significantly, color charge is carried by gluons as well as quarks. Mjackson (talk) 15:19, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

As suggested by Zach Weinersmith ("For a joke: If you put pure alcohol under extreme pressure, could you claim to exceed 200 proof?"), it's kind of confusing that the comic suggests alcohol proof can exceed 200 proof, and also that baseball batting averages can exceed 100%. Although on further review, they use the arrow-dot →∙ notation rather than the dot-arrow ∙→, so maybe it's not intended to indicate a lack of an upper bound. But then I'm not sure what it does indicate, esp. compared to the Electric Charge property. Continuous vs. discrete? It doesn't seem clear… JohnHawkinson (talk) 15:41, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I think the arrow-dot is meant to mean "approaches, but does not (usually) reach" -- asymptotic behavior, in other words. 162.158.62.15 16:39, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I feel I can say with confidence that Arrow-Dot means "goes up to and including this number, but no more, this is the maximum", compared to the other scales with Dot-Arrow, which appear to mean "this dot/value is the highest you'll usually see, but it can be higher". For example the heat/spicy scale (I can't see it right now, can't remember what it's labelled as), the highest is 4 peppers and has a Dot-Arrow, but dishes which would be marked 4 Peppers would be relatively low on the Scovile Heat Scale (the actual scale for this). At one point I was looking into the heat scale, when I was figuring out the Frank's Red Hot sauces a local establishment carries, to see how much heat I like. The original Frank's lands at 450 Scovile Heat Units (SHU) and the Xtra Hot at 2,085 SHU. By comparison, Tabasco sauce is 2,500, the actual Tabasco pepper and Cayenne pepper are both between 30,000 to 50,000, Jalapeño averages 5,000 and the Ghost Chile Pepper over 800,000 and can top 1 million SHU. I'm sure the Tabasco, Cayenne and Ghost peppers are well above the scale in this comic. :) I read that the spiciest hot sauce you can buy commericially - as in without special mail order or something - is around 750,000 SHU. NiceGuy1 (talk) 04:36, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Proof is presumably US proof - UK usage based on gunpowder 175 degrees proof would be 100% alcohol

Batting average is presumably from baseball Cricket batting averages are measured in runs per dismissal and are in theory unbounded. It is possible to have an infinite average for a season or series - though in terms of lifetime averages the best for players with more than ten matches is 99.96.

If it is for baseball, it's labeled incorrectly. A perfect batting average is 1.000, not 100%. Batting average is actually a ratio - number of hits to number of at-bats - expressed as a decimal, not a percentage. For example, if a batter goes 3 for 5 in a game, his batting average would be .600, not 60%. OldCorps (talk) 16:25, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

We should probably arrange descriptions into a table.

How is it that there's no pain scale?

Because Randall didn't think -- or possibly want -- to use it. Besides, do you really want every scale in existence in a single comic? If not, Randall has to select based on his own criteria, whatever they may be. As it is, there are 9 or 10 (depending on how you count "entropy") fields that don't apply to particle properties, as opposed to 5 or 6 that do. Gotta stop somewhere. Nyperold (talk) 22:44, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

He could also have added the Volume scale, which would, of course, have been between 0 and 11.141.101.107.66 13:20, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Actually, D&D calls you "dead" if you go to your NEGATIVE hit point maximum. Otherwise, you make a completely random (50%) death saving throw. After 3 cumulative fails, you die. After 3 cumulative successes, you are stable. More info can be found in the Player's Handbook. SilverMagpie (talk) 21:33, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

According to the rules I know (Editions 3, 3.5 and Pathfinder) it's: 0 HP = unconscious; [-1; -CON) = dying (-> lose 1 HP each round unless you make a successful CON check); -CON = dead. http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/conditions/#TOC-Dead Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 10:15, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

• In GURPS, your hit points can get even more negative. Below 0 hit points, you need to make a save each turn or fall unconscious; for each [HP] damage beyond that, you make a save against dying. At -5*[HP] hit points you die automatically; at -10*[HP] your body is more or less destroyed. (Also, in GURPS your hit points don't arbitrarily grow; an average character has between 5 and 15 hit points.) - Mike Rosoft (talk) 17:08, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

"Heat" measured in jalapeño has also been used by some email systems such as Eudora to measure how strong an email message is (e.g., whether it will lead to a flame war) 198.41.238.46 05:02, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Jalapeño measure between 2,500 to 8,000 Scoville Heat Units, or roughly 5,000 SHUs on average, so in theory you can assign objective values to a 1,2,3 jalapeño scale, i.e. 5000, 10000, 15000 SHUs RoyT (talk) 07:34, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

"String Type" being ByteString-CharString is a reference to Haskell, the programming language referenced in 1312: Haskell and used to make 1037: Umlaut, which is structurally obsessed with data types. ByteString is the go-to type for dynamic text, which in more literal form unpacks to a String of [Char]s. 108.162.246.65 08:41, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

The lower case g in Kg looks odd. I thought it was a strangely shaped 's'. WhiteDragon (talk) 20:35, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Pretty sure the jalapeños are from ratemyprofessor.com: the tell is the grayed out one for zero 162.158.62.81 14:25, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Marshall amps is unfortunately missing :-) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xgx4k83zzc 162.158.234.4

The table is quite similar to the tables in wolfram alpha. 162.158.178.221 11:16, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Probably not even worth mentioning in the trivia, but liquor can never reach 200 proof. Distillation can't remove the last 10% or so of water from a water/ethanol solution, you have to dehydrate it chemically, e. g. by reacting it with a metal oxide to produce a hydroxide. Nitpicking (talk) 23:10, 10 April 2022 (UTC)