PHYS 3650 - Modern Physics
Lesson 29 - Nuclear Fusion and Elementary Particles

Study Assignment:

Chapter 30, Section 30.3 - 30.16

Lesson notes:

In this lesson, we will discuss the fusion process and proposed methods to produce electrical energy from it.  We will also introduce the topic of elementary particles.

Objectives:

1. Be able to describe the fusion reactions that might be used as an energy source on Earth.

2. Be able to calculate the energy released in a fusion reaction.

3. Understand why the use fusion as a practical energy source is so attractive and has been difficult to achieve.

4. Understand and be able to state the three requirements that must be satisfied for a sustained fusion reaction.

5. Understand the Lawson criterion.

6. Understand the two proposed types of fusion reactors: magnetic confinement fusion and inertial confinement fusion.

7. Understand the classification of particles as hadrons and leptons.

8. Understand the fundamental forces of nature and their conservation laws.

9. Understand the concept of strangeness.

10. Understand the properties and characteristics of quarks, and how tquarks combine to form baryons and mesons.

11. Qualitatively understand the color force.

12. Understand the connection between the elementary particles and the Big Bang.

Vocabulary:

Lawson criterion
magnetic confinement
tokamak
inertial confinement
eightfold way
charm
top
bottom
color
gluon
electroweak force
intermediate vector bosons (W⁺,  W^-,and Z⁰)
Standard Model
Higgs boson

Homework:

TP:  30-10, 30-12, 30-21, 30-22, 30-24, 30-26, 30-27, 30-28, 30-35, 30-45

Additional resources:

Fusion basics are provided by the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Internet Plasma Physics Education eXperience (IPPEX) site provides information on fusion.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is described at the site at this link.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is described at the site at this link.

Raymond Davis Jr. shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics for his experimental study of solar neutrinos.  Brookhaven National Laboratory provides a description of the experiment.

The Nobel Foundation provides biographies for the following:

Hideki Yukawa
Murray Gell-Man
Burton Richter
Samuel Chao Chung Ting
Sheldon Glashow
Abdus Salam
Steven Weinberg
Carlo Rubbia
Simon van der Meer
Martin Perl
Gerardus t'Hooft
Martinus J.G. Veltman

Eightfold way diagrams (source of the diagrams is unknown - they appear in many Web sites without attribution):

spin 1/2 baryons:

  
spin 0 mesons:

Last update: December 02, 2002