Leptons

Leptons are another component of the Standard Model.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Image from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model

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There are also 6 flavors of Lepton, the electron, muon, tau, electron neutrion, muon neutrino, and tau neutrino. I'm sure that you recognize the electron, the particle that flows through a wire to conduct electricity and whizzes around the atom. You may know about neutrinos, elusive, low-mass particles.

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Neutrinos have been the subject of study for a very long time. They are very difficult to detect as they have no charge and almost no mass. A low-energy neutrino could pass through the entire earth without interacting with anything. In order to detect them, we create elaborate systems such as the largest neutrino detector on earth, IceCube, under the Antarctic ice cap.

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The muon and tau are heavier cousins of the electron. We will go over them in the next page.