Hello, guys! It’s me! Warotan!
So…Who are you?→ABOUT ME
Japanese version: 日常が刺激的に!湯川秀樹著『旅人』
This time I introduce “A TRAVELER” by Hideki Yukawa to you.
For the beginnig, I’m not intended to comment on the details but focunsing on
How my daily life has changed by reading it.
So, please read this page with ease.
Before ending this part, I tell you the construction of this page, so please select where you start to read to your interests.
Who is Hideki Yukawa?
For scientific people ( Especially Japanese), the name should give you courage and guts.
This part gives some information of him to people who don’t know.
Dr. Yukawa is the person who played an active role in Nuclear Physics.
Nuclear Physics? It sounds like a difficult and somehow dangerous field, doesn’t it?
However, you might have heard the word “atoms“.
As you may know, we now think that atoms compose all things around us.
Some small balls moving around a large one, yes that’s it.
The center-placed large ball is called nucleus.
You can easily imagine, right?
The Nuclear Physics is the field studying the ball.
By the way, can you imagin how tiny the ball is?
It’s about 0.0000000001 meters! VERY SMALL!!
To help you think of it, let’s take a 1-cent from your wallet and equally divide it into 10 billion parts.
The one of the parts is approximately the same size of nuclues.
It’s a really tiny world!!
That’s why we can observe strange phenomena. ( I’ll talk about the details if I remember )
At that time, there were two well-known facts. One is that there exists minus-charged particles called “electron” and the is that atoms are electrically neutral.
So, we should cancel the minus.
After many experiences done, there seemed to be plus-charged particles in the center of the atoms.
Here, one question risen.
Why can so many plus be gathered in such a narrow place?
You know the same kind of charged particles interact repulsively, right?
It’s impossible that the plus particles are centralized in such a tiny region.
The commonly known image of atoms is acutually really strange.
In fact, in the past, there was a model called “raisin bread model” which says that
atoms are constructed by minus particles and cloudly-spread plus electricity.
Simply speaking,
raisin = minus particles
cloudly-spread one = plus
This idea was the mainstream in Europe.
If the idea were correct, we could avoid thinking such a strange thing that the plus particles are gathered in one place.
However, an experimentalist Rutherford stroke alpha particles on gold atoms and found that there seemed to be some kind of mass centered at the atom.
This is really bothering, but fact is fact.
We have to design a model which can explain the fact.
Another model called “Nagaoka model” can explain it and this is the image you might think now.
The experiments showed the model is correct.
However, here is one remaining question.
Why can the plus particles be placed in such a small region?
There were so many people who studied this problem and Dr. Yukawa was one of them.
Excepting details, but he showed theoretically that if there is some kind of bonding agents affecting very short-range and strongly, then it is possible.
The theory is called \(\pi\) meson ( or pion) theory.
Dr. Yukawa is the person who solved a large mistery of nucleus
“A TRAVELER”~My favorite scene~
This book is a life story of Dr. Yukawa’s who won the first novel physics prize among Japanese people.
The period is from his childfood to about 30 years old.
I think it is really important for us to know what kind of life he spent because I think it is a good way to become a historical person.
In other words, what is important is to take some pieces of their thoughts.
That’s why I started to read their life stories (I will talk about Shinichirou Tomonaga some day ).
My favorite seen is his playing tag in shrines or somewhere when he was a little boy.
The book says that he lay on the ground because he got tired.
His heart was grabbed curiously by the picture of the sunlight filtering through trees.
And it says, when the idea ( pion theory ) occured to me, this image happend to cross my mind.
The situation of the sunlight is similar to that of the image I showed you some minutes ago. Certainly true.
Like this, I think physics can give us impression that
unexpected things are similar to each other at unexpected timing.
I also think that he is a really great writer because we can learn that from him.
One admonishing of that, there spreads out a wonder-wonder-wonderful world!
In my daily life, I regard the sunlight as nuclues, like,
this is pion and that is proton…
I’m sick.
But it’s very fun because the sunlight is everywhere!
Whenever I see it, I’m impressed!
It’s totally fantastic!
That’s why I decided to go to a grad school and it’s like a place infested with demons.
Summary
Now, that’s all I wanted to write, what do you think?
First, I introduced Hideki Yukawa and Nuclear Physics.
Second, I wrote about my favorite seen.
The book contains some stories that Dr. Yukawa struggled to get his results, so if you think of going to a grad school, I recommend you to read this at least one time.
I personally hope this blog can spread how splendid the physics world is all over the world.
Next time, I will introduce “Physics in mirror” by Shinichirou Tomonaga.
You can download the images used here from Pixabay for free.
I want to thank them.
If you have any comment, please let me know from the e-mail address below or the CONTACT on the menu bar.
tsunetthi(at)gmail.com
Please change (at) to @.
Or you can also contact me via twitter (@warotan3)