Editing 2967: Matter

{{comic
| number    = 2967
| date      = August 2, 2024
| title     = Matter
| image     = matter_2x.png
| imagesize = 234x341px
| noexpand  = true
| titletext = He was the first person to land a 900, which is especially impressive because pulling off a half-integer spin requires obeying Fermi-Dirac statistics.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a GOOFY FRONTSIDE WIKI GRIND TO SECRET PHYSICS DEMO TAPE - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In {{w|skateboarding}}, the term "goofy" means to push with the left foot, using the {{w|Footedness#Goofy_stance|opposite stance}} to the supposedly standard stance of pushing with one's right foot. The comic uses those stances as an analogy for {{w|antimatter}} in particle physics, which has the opposite electrical charge of corresponding matter particles that will annihilate each other upon collision, releasing energy proportional to their combined mass. In this comic, famed professional skateboarder {{w|Tony Hawk}} has obtained a professorship in physics and is teaching this very non-standard concept. As Tony Hawk does not have a degree in physics,{{Citation needed}} teaching inaccurate lessons could be a likely pitfall of his gaining a professorship in real life. Hawk is also the subject of [[296: Tony Hawk]].

Unlike other distributions of 'handedness' in the natural world (chemical {{w|chirality}}, or the {{w|skewness}} of {{w|Multimodal distribution|bimodal statistics}} describing asymmetries in nature called {{w|homochirality}}), 'goofy-footed' skateboarders are about as common as those using standard footing. Thus the analogy indirectly raises the issue of {{w|baryon asymmetry}}, the observation that ordinary matter is very much more common than antimatter because there is so little evidence of annihilation throughout the universe. Baryon asymmetry is often thought to have resulted from fluctuations during {{w|Inflation (cosmology)|cosmological inflation}} between 10<sup>−33</sup> and 10<sup>−32</sup> seconds [https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.251301 after the Big Bang], although there are several other candidate explanations of varying falsifiability.

The title text describes Hawk as the first person to "land a 900," meaning the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YYTNkAdDD8&t=1m30s successful completion] of {{w|900 (skateboarding)|a skateboarding trick}} that involves two and a half rotations (nine hundred degrees, as 2.5 × 360° = 900°). In physics, {{w|Spin (physics)|spin}} is a {{w|quantum number}} describing subatomic particles (see [[1862: Particle Properties]]), named in reference to the vaguely analogous ''but crucially distinct'' concept of {{w|angular momentum}} in classical physics. Obeying {{w|Fermi–Dirac statistics}} requires that the particles involved are {{w|fermion}}s, which include all of the electrons, protons and neutrons that compose the entirety of everyone's body and electrochemical state. Fermions all have {{w|half-integer}} (i.e., ...–1½, –½, ½, 1½...) {{w|spin quantum number}}s which do indeed include 2½, but only [https://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/s137 extremely rare particles] have a spin of 5/2. However, it's very important to remember that [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYeRS5a3HbE&ab_channel=ScienceClicEnglish quantum mechanical spin is ''not'' rotation, but instead how quickly the corresponding particle changes state when rotated.]

While everyone (and almost everything we ordinarily interact with except light and cosmic rays) is composed entirely of fermions, {{w|Boson#Composite bosons|any composite particle made of an even number of fermions, including entire atoms and their nuclei, are not fermions}} but {{w|boson}}s, which do ''not'' obey Fermi–Dirac statistics. Luckily, landing a 900 does not actually require obedience to Fermi–Dirac statistics because a skateboarder composed entirely of bosonic atoms would still have fermionic electrons in the orbitals of those atoms and thus would still obey the far more macroscopically fundamental and consequential {{w|Pauli exclusion principle}}. That principle gives atoms and molecules, which are almost entirely empty space, a means to establish an 'in contact' separation distance. By maintaining a sense of physical volume and structure, it allows us to hold things, walk, make sound waves with our voices and allows (sufficiently skilled) skateboarders to land a 900.

==Transcript==
:[Tony Hawk (drawn with short hair) is gesturing at a narrow whiteboard on which illegible things are marked, what may be a Feynman diagram with one of the particle/antiparticle pair going into a circle (possibly representing a black hole, and thus depicting the popularized (incorrect) analogy for {{w|Hawking radiation}}), and at the bottom, a 2x3 table of illegible values.]
:Tony Hawk: In the standard model, regular matter will annihilate if it comes in contact with oppositely-charged ''goofy'' matter.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Tony Hawk becomes a physics professor

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Skateboard]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Statistics]]