3293: Handedness

Handedness

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Title text: A 'left-handed specialist' is a physicist who studies the weak interaction.

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Explanation

This is one of 46 incomplete explanations: This page was created recently by a LEFT-HANDED BOT. Don't remove this notice too soon. You can help by editing the explanation!

The spin of a subatomic particle gives it handedness, so that it is not identical to its mirror image. Particles may thus be described as left- or right-handed.

In an entirely unrelated^{[citation needed]} phenomenon, most humans have a preferred hand to use, also making them left- or right-handed. In baseball, pitchers throw with their preferred hand, and batters stand with the preferred hand away from the pitcher. Batters of the opposite handedness from the pitcher have a slight advantage in hitting, and managers will sometimes choose a substitute batter or pitcher to send in based on this difference.

This comic makes a joke by mixing up human and particle handedness, pretending that a right-handed batter is going to be swinging at left-handed particles to try to hit them. This is not how particle colliders, or baseball, work.^{[citation needed]}

In the title text, right-handed particles aren't affected by the weak nuclear force, so people who specialize in that force mostly study left-handed particles and could be called left-handed specialists. However, in baseball a "left-handed specialist" is a pitcher who specializes in throwing to left-handed batters, rather than anything to do with particle physics.

Transcript

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[Ponytail and Cueball stand looking at a whiteboard on the wall which has some illegible text and a graph on it. Cueball has his hand on his chin.]

Ponytail: The W bosons produced by the collider beam will mostly be left-handed.

Cueball: So we should send in a right-handed batter.

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Discussion

How do I add this to a category again? Xkdvd (talk) 21:30, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

If in doubt, and you know of a page with the category you want to appear here, go there, edit it (just to see the page-source) and have a look at the bottom for the category tag (it'll be [[Category:...something or other...]], of course), copy it and then come back to the page you want it in and similarly paste it at the bottom.

If you're asking how to create a new category, then I suggest you don't. If you have to ask, better to suggest your idea. State which comics (more than just one!) apply, suggest the "...something or other..." name that you're thinking of, and maybe someone who isn't quite so raw at this will agree and make it so. Hopefully also make it so in a consistent manner with the rest of the categories here, if you hadn't got the idea quite right, but that's not guaranteed. 81.179.200.82 22:16, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

Would a 'left-handed specialist' be known as a 'levo-physicist'? BorQhue del Sol (talk) 21:59, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

I'm sure this is common knowledge here but what do you MEAN the weak force cares about fucking PARTICLE SPIN??? That feels horrifying to me and I can't explain why but just what. Since when can fundamental forces do that, just ignore based on particle spin?? I guess at least since 10E-36 to 10E-32 seconds after the big bang, when the electroweak force got split up, but still this feels weird, that particle spin determines whether the force can interact with the particle entirely. Not how it interacts, not what direction results get launched, just. whether it happens. Existentially horrifying to me IllegallyNamed (talk) 22:25, 2 September 2026 (UTC)
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