File talk:Standard Model Flowchart.pdf

Does it take up space

"Does it take up space" - What is meant by that? Elementary particles are assumed to be point-like. Jrueb (talk) 16:16, 10 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I assume it alludes to the Pauli exclusion principle: Two fermions cannot share the same quantum numbers. As a consequence, if you have a lot of fermions, they cannot all be exactly in the same spot. This is just the ordinary behaviour of matter as we know it (which is made of fermions). Contrary to that, two bosons can – in principle – share the same quantum numbers. They can be exactly in the same state, including their location (whatever that means for quantum particles). One example for this is a laser resonator: It can contain an arbitrary number of photons (which are bosons), all of them having the same frequency and all of them being confined between the same two mirrors. Now, if you can put an arbitrary number of “things” in a confined space, you could argue that these “things” do not take up space. I appreciate the image author’s effort to avoid the technical term “spin (physics)”, but I agree with User:Jrueb that the current wording is not completely clear. --2001:16B8:1713:C100:7567:BD21:61BF:E155 (talk) 22:56, 11 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]