3293: Handedness
| Handedness |
 Title text: A 'left-handed specialist' is a physicist who studies the weak interaction. |
Explanation[edit]
|
This is one of 50 incomplete explanations: |
The spin of a subatomic particle gives it handedness, so that it is not identical to its mirror image. Particles may thus be described as left- or right-handed.
This phenomenon is named after, but entirely unrelated to, human handedness: most humans have a preferred hand (right or left) to use. In baseball, pitchers throw with their preferred hand, and batters stand with the preferred hand away from the pitcher. Batters of the opposite handedness from the pitcher have a slight advantage in hitting, and managers will sometimes choose a substitute batter or pitcher to send in based on this difference.
This comic conflates human and particle handedness, pretending that a right-handed batter is going to be swinging at left-handed particles to try to hit them. This is not how particle colliders work. However, in the game known as baseball, right-handed batters do in fact hit left handed particles — electrons — that are contained within the ball.
In the title text, right-handed particles aren't affected by the weak nuclear force, so people who specialize in that force mostly study left-handed particles and could be called left-handed specialists. In baseball, by contrast, a "left-handed specialist" is a pitcher who specializes in throwing to left-handed batters, rather than anything to do with particle physics.
Transcript[edit]
|
This is one of 34 incomplete transcripts: |
- [Ponytail and Cueball stand looking at a whiteboard on the wall which has some illegible text (partly accented by an underline, a surrounding bubble, and a box), what looks like a sketch of a particle-collider, and a graph on it. Cueball has his hand on his chin.]
- Ponytail: The W bosons produced by the collider beam will mostly be left-handed.
- Cueball: So we should send in a right-handed batter.
Add comment 
Create topic (use sparingly) 
Refresh
Discussion
How do I add this to a category again? Xkdvd (talk) 21:30, 2 September 2026 (UTC)
- If in doubt, and you know of a page with the category you want to appear here, go there, edit it (just to see the page-source) and have a look at the bottom for the category tag (it'll be
[[Category:...something or other...]], of course), copy it and then come back to the page you want it in and similarly paste it at the bottom. - If you're asking how to create a new category, then I suggest you don't. If you have to ask, better to suggest your idea. State which comics (more than just one!) apply, suggest the "...something or other..." name that you're thinking of, and maybe someone who isn't quite so raw at this will agree and make it so. Hopefully also make it so in a consistent manner with the rest of the categories here, if you hadn't got the idea quite right, but that's not guaranteed. 81.179.200.82 22:16, 2 September 2026 (UTC)
Would a 'left-handed specialist' be known as a 'levo-physicist'? BorQhue del Sol (talk) 21:59, 2 September 2026 (UTC)
- They're all pretty sinister.Lordpishky (talk) 17:48, 3 September 2026 (UTC)
I'm sure this is common knowledge here but what do you MEAN the weak force cares about fucking PARTICLE SPIN??? That feels horrifying to me and I can't explain why but just what. Since when can fundamental forces do that, just ignore based on particle spin?? I guess at least since 10E-36 to 10E-32 seconds after the big bang, when the electroweak force got split up, but still this feels weird, that particle spin determines whether the force can interact with the particle entirely. Not how it interacts, not what direction results get launched, just. whether it happens. Existentially horrifying to me IllegallyNamed (talk) 22:25, 2 September 2026 (UTC)
- the weak force actually cares about the chirality of the particle, which is a more fundamental characteristic of a particle than spin. i think the confusion here comes from the fact that for highly relativistic particles chirality is the same thing as helicity, which is the projection of spin on the direction of motion.
- as far as we know, every lepton is chiral left-handed, so it turns out that the weak interaction doesn’t discriminate in nature. 2601:840:8782:3D70:7D31:F094:60BA:97BD 11:49, 3 September 2026 (UTC)
- Just to be a bit fussy: "every lepton is chiral left-handed" is true but every anti-lepton is right-handed. It depends on if you are using "lepton" as a class to include the anti-particles. Also, I believe that if the weak force itself doesn't discriminate then right-handed leptons and left-handed anti lepton could (and therefore would) be pair produced. Lordpishky (talk) 01:21, 4 September 2026 (UTC)
I want to think he used bosons because his local baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, can be called BoSox. so a ball thrown by a Red Sox pitcher could be a boson. probably not intended but I like working one more pun into this. Student Driver (talk) 02:45, 3 September 2026 (UTC)
"I'm the batter. I have a sacred mission to fulfill. I must purify the world." - Cueball
what does the article mean in saying helicity is unrelated to handedness? isn't right handed spin clockwise and left handed spin counter-clockwise, based on how your fingers wrap around your hands? (paigefile) (talk) 05:48, 3 September 2026 (UTC)
- Human handedness refers to the preferred hand one uses for writing or throwing a baseball, not any rotation. Though I do suspect that there is a different preferred direction of spin on a baseball thrown by a left or right handed pitcher. And a pitcher does turn slightly during when pitching. Lordpishky (talk) 17:58, 3 September 2026 (UTC)
- Reminds me of cricket spin-bowling... Well, it fairly obviously has some similarities, and may or may not be just as complex. 81.179.200.82 19:46, 3 September 2026 (UTC)
Add comment