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Affilliation
When Facts from Elementary Become Obsolete
Do they still teach atoms as elementary particles of matter at school?
It appears that experiments have already produced enough evidence for humans to accept that matter is made up of quarks (up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom), and leptons (electron neutrino, electron, muon neutrino, muon, tau neutrino, and tau), the collective term for the two being fermions. Bosons (gluon, W and Z bosons, photon, Higgs boson, and graviton) are elementary particles too, but they are more related to force than matter. There are holes in the theories, but these particles are already experimentally proven to exist.
I hope that the local schools are at least recognizing these findings (do they already?). If they don’t, I can understand that the schools might want things ironed out first before teaching something. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean we have to stick to old theories when the definitions are no longer applicable (how can you define atoms as “elementary particles” if they are no longer “elementary”)?
Regardless, it makes me feel old. By instinct, atoms still pop to mind when discussing the building blocks of matter, “a ba ka da…” still comes to mind when I think of the Filipino alphabet (I remember the transition to “abcd… n ñ ng…z”), and I still instinctively think that there are 9 planets on our solar system (Pluto is now classified as a “dwarf-planet”, not a “planet” by the International Astronomical Union. Ergo, we have only 8 “planets” in our solar system). It’s one thing to be technologically left behind, but it makes one feel archaic when the foundations of your world have changed.
Tags: opinion
