Finding parts of protons

Structure inside nucleons

Read the passage below, which describes some of the work that gave evidence that protons and
neutrons are indeed composed of parts – quarks and the gluons which hold the quarks together.
Some phrases are highlighted in bold. The questions ask you to say more about these highlighted
phrases.
Firing high-energy electrons at protons
In the late 1960s, the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) was used to scatter electrons at
energies up to 20 GeV from protons. At these energies, the electrons get right inside the protons
and can be used to see if there is any structure inside.
The electron exchanges a virtual photon with a charged particle inside the proton, and is
scattered at an angle. The photon transfers energy and momentum to the charged particle in
the proton, which is given a huge kick. However, what comes out is not the internal bits of the
proton, expected to be quarks, but a spray or ‘jet’ of all sorts of particles, created in particle–
antiparticle pairs in the event. So the experimental results were a bit of a mess.
At the time, there was an idea that protons (and neutrons) might be made of triplets of particles
called quarks. But nobody had ever seen a quark on its own. So it was annoying that quarks on
their own weren’t kicked out of protons by the high-energy electrons. And a lot of people didn’t
believe in quarks anyway, because of their weird properties (especially having charges of 1 / 3 or 2 /
3 the charge on an electron). So the interpretation of the results was a bit of a mess, too.
Richard Feynman thinks of ‘partons’
A theoretical physicist at SLAC, James Bjorken, noticed that the way the scattering varied with
increasing energy should depend in a simple way just on how many pieces there were inside, and
not much on what the pieces actually were. On a visit, listening to Bjorken, Richard Feynman
realised that there was a simple reason for this behaviour. It was that an electron could in practice
only ever hit one of the pieces. Feynman called the pieces ‘partons’, to remind himself and everyone
else that they didn’t know what they were. But they had a way to find out how many there were,
from the scattering pattern.
Feynman got the idea that an electron would only ever hit one parton, making the scattering pattern
simple, by paying attention to the fact that the electrons were travelling at nearly the speed of light
(energy equal to thousands of times their rest energy or mass). The electron ‘sees’ a proton
rushing towards it at nearly the speed of light. Time dilation means that even though the partons
must be whizzing about inside the proton, the electron sees them ambling gently, even ‘frozen’ in
place. And length contraction flattens the proton into a disc, as seen by the electron. So there is
never one parton hiding behind another. All this turned a complicated calculation into a simple one.
Instead of thinking about how an electron might interact with any number of partons, Feynman had
seen that it all boiled down to hitting just one of them at a time.
So everyone at SLAC got very keen on partons, with competing ideas about what they were. When it
became clear from the way the scattering varied with energy and momentum that there were just
three of them, with charges 1 / 3 or 2 / 3 that on the electron, the quark hypothesis started to win
the day. But it wasn’t until November 1974 that some other important results finally convinced
everybody (the ‘November Revolution’). So Feynman’s ‘partons’ served a very useful turn.
Sometimes being non-committal is a good plan. At least you don’t persuade yourself that you
know something you don’t really know.

1. Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC): Make a sketch of a linear accelerator. Write a few lines
about how a linear accelerator works. Explain why a cathode ray tube can be thought of as
 containing a linear accelerator.

2. Energies up to 20 GeV: Write out 20 GeV in standard form, in units of electron volts and in
units of joules.

3. The electron exchanges a virtual photon with a charged particle: What is meant by
exchanging a virtual photon? Give another example of an interaction which involves exchanging
virtual photons.

4. The photon transfers energy and momentum: Answer the objection that this can’t be true
because photons have zero mass and thus momentum = m v must be zero, whatever the speed
v.

5. Created in particle–antiparticle pairs: Give an example of a practical use of the creation or

annihilation of particle–antiparticle pairs.

6. Triplets of particles called quarks: ‘up’ quarks have charge + 2/3 e and ‘down’ quarks have
charge – 1/3 e. Find combinations of three which could make a proton of charge + 1 e and a
neutron with zero charge.
7. Energy equal to thousands of times their rest energy or mass: The rest energy Erest = m
2
c of an electron is about 0.5 MeV. Show that this statement is correct.

8. Time dilation: Write a few lines explaining what this means.

9. Feynman had seen that it all boiled down to hitting just one of them at a time: Explain
how this makes the scattering like Rutherford scattering of alpha particles by a nucleus.

10. At least you don’t persuade yourself that you know something you don’t really know:
Suggest another example in physics of a term chosen without knowing what exactly was going
on.