The Standard model

"The Standard Model", people often think it's like the "basic version" of physics or some intro-level shit. But no, babes, it’s the most expensive, complicated, and successful theory ever cooked up. Yeah, they literally built the collider just to finish it properly - through the Higgs. That little guy was crucial.

It explains almost everything... except for the stuff we actually care about the most 🥲

So what even is it?

The Standard Model is like the Periodic Table, but instead of chemistry crap like hydrogen and oxygen, it's the Periodic Table of the actual building blocks of the Universe. (Yes, I’m talking quarks, leptons, and the carriers of fundamental forces because particles can't do shit on their own, they always need a middleman. Flaccid little things...)

This theory bundles up:

12 matter particles (6 quarks + 6 leptons)

4 fundamental forces (well, 3 really, gravity is a drama queen and refuses to join the party. I’ll try explaining that mess another time)

1 Higgs boson, without which everything would just be zipping around at the speed of light with zero mass. We’ve talked about this one already.


Now, the juicy bits:

Quarks are the real building blocks

(Like, if you bricked yourself, these would be the bricks 💩, haha, not funny😐)

There are six of them: up, down, charm, strange, top, bottom.
Yeah, I know, they sound like a lineup of budget vape flavors. I was gonna say “for Zoomers,” but hey, I’m one too, kinda(I'm 27 btw)

They make up protons and neutrons and more stuff, but let’s not fry your brain just yet.

Leptons

Electrons? Leptons.
Their weird cousins: muon (hefty, dies quick), tau (even beefier, dies even faster, sad story).
And then we’ve got the neutrinos, the most undercover little fuckers in the universe. Seriously. Absolute sneaky bastards. They barely interact with anything, catch them in an experiment? Good fucking luck

Bosons are the delivery boys
The particle Uber Eats guys.

Photon delivers electromagnetic force

Gluons handle the strong nuclear force

W and Z bosons are for the weak force - responsible for certain decays and flavor changes.
(Yeah, "flavor" is a real physics term. I know. Someone was high.)


So yeah, quarks can change into other quarks, leptons into other leptons.

Anyway, that’s enough chaos for now.
I’ll drop more cursed physics knowledge later.