Spank Me

Here is a true story. Way back in the 60's, when atom smashing was just starting, it was thought that the basic building blocks of matter were not really that basic after all.

Protons and neutrons were bashed together so violently that they acted like they were made of smaller bits.

These bits were named "quarks", after the word from the book Finnegan's Wake. At first, two were enough to explain all of normal matter, and we called the "up" and "down" quarks. However, strange things started to happen soon after.

Literally.

Particles flew out which did not behave as they should have. Then to add insult to injury, us scientists added to the "up" ans "down" quarks another "flavor" of quark.

We called these strange particles "strange" particles.

This one was much heavier than the previous two, so it took much more energy to produce it.

The prediction was then made of a further "flavor" of quark, available at still higher energies.

Once again, our verbosity got the better of us and we named it "charm".

This quark first appeared in what we lovingly called a "charmonium" - a particle made up of one charm and it's antiparticle.

To scientists, this was not good enough - we wanted pure charm, ie charm on it's own. So the search for "bare charm" was begun.

As the energy of the accelerators increased, sure enough, bare charm was found.

That brought the quarks to four (up, down, strange, charmed).

It gets even funnier. The theorists told us that the had figured out that there were no more than a total of six.

So we got our thinking caps on again and came up with two more wonderful names - "bottom", and "top" , each one still heavier than the last. At first, we found the "bottom" quark, then eventually, the "top"

Imagine the remarks that were made when we tried searching for "bare bottom".

That just about sums it up really