The Strong Force as an introduction to Lie Groups

About the author

Hello everyone, I am Fer. You may know me from the videos I've written for PBS Space Time, or from my own YouTube channel where I make videos about whatever I find interesting at the time.

I have a masters in physics and most of my experience is in medical physics, mostly proton therapy and X-rays, but I also love the theoretical side of physics. Whenever I understand something I feel joy and this gives me a deep impulse to explain it to others so that they can feel it too.

Also, here is a link to my CV just in case you are interested.

Quick Summary

The Strong Force is so cool. It combines symmetries, anti-symmetries, groups, singlet and multiplet states, Lie groups and so much more! It's like a work of art once you understand it! Or rather, it's like an art gallery where every aspect of it is a masterpiece of mathematical beauty, which is not always the case ( looking at you, Weak Force >=c )

However most people don't know about the Strong Force, or if they do, they only have a very vague notion of what it is. Things like: "It keeps protons and neutrons together in the nucleus of atoms," without any notion of how it does that.

In terms of the school system this makes sense. Most people don't need to learn about the Strong Force at all, but I disagree. I believe that even if the Strong Force is not relevant for someone's future work or studies it is worth learning because:

1.- Of its sheer beauty.

2.- It is good to understand the universe we inhabit.

3.- And finally, because it can be an excellent introduction into other more useful subjects ( looking at you, Weak Force >=c )

My goal is to make a video aimed at students around 17 or 18 years old, who are either leaving high school or entering college and who may be interested in physics or mathematics. The video should provide them with a clear understanding of the Strong Force which they'll be able to take into their future studies.

Now when they study math, physics, or even chemistry, and they learn about things like groups, symmetries, spin, the nucleus of atoms, and even lie algebras, they will have a much deeper understanding of those topics. And hopefully when they reach topics like Quantum Chromodynamics they'll be more than ready, and who knows? Some of them may go on to specialize on that subject.

Target medium

I think this should be a video, mostly because that's what I have experience making. Here are my skills in order:

1.- Writing is my specialty, I'm really good at it.

2.- Narrating also comes fairly easy to me.

3.- Editing is a necessary evil. I really don't like doing it, but I've done it so much i've become good at it against my own will.

4.- Animations and Illustrations are my weak spot. However I do make storyboards for PBS videos from time to time. It is way easier to figure out what the animation should be than actually making it

I'm looking for someone who is good at animations and illustrations, and if they are good at editing too I would be very grateful.

More details

I've been wanting to make this video for a while. I've written a few drafts and I have a fairly good idea of how the explanation is supposed to flow. The reason holding me back has been that this topic really need visual aid and as I mentioned before that's my weak spot.

Here is a brief outline of the video:

1.- We start with no math, just observations. In this case scientists observed protons and neutrons being together in the nucleus of atoms. They deduced there had to be a force keeping them together. They guessed that maybe protons and neutrons had some internal structure that could explain that force, and they found that internal structure.

2.- However that structure was confusing because apparently it violated Pauli's Exclusion Principle. This principle says that the functions representing fermions must be antisymmetric.

3.- We explain what we mean by "antisymmetric functions" using spin as an example. It's important we use spin, it's comes up again later.

4.- We introduce a new quantity to keep the antisymmetry of the wave functions. This is the Color Charge.

5.- This new quantity must produce a field which keeping protons and neutrons together, this is the Strong Force. However this force seems to only act in very small scales, which is weird because gluons (the excitations in the Strong field) are massless. We would expect it to behave like gravity or electromagnetism.

6.- This problem is solved by Asymptotic Freedom, but now we have a new problem: How can the Strong Force be contained?

7.- To contain the Strong Force we need singlet states, so we have to explain the difference between singlet and multiplet states (these are related to elements in a Lie group). We explain it using spin since it's a simpler case but the idea is the same.

8.- Now we recognize the Eightfold Way of Murray Gell-Mann and we bring this all together under SU(3)

Contact details

If you are interested you should send me an email at francofelix94@gmail.com

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