What the World Is Made Of

I know you're all following the Minute Physics videos (that we talked about here), but just in case my knowledge is somehow fallible you really should start following them. After taking care of why stones are round, and why there is no pink light, Henry Reich is now explaining the fundamental nature of our everyday world: quantum field theory and the Standard Model. It's a multi-part series, since some things deserve more than a minute, dammit. Two parts have been posted so far. The first is just an intro, pointing out something we've already heard: the Standard Model of Particle physics describes all the world we experience in our everyday lives. [embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVO0HgMi6Lc[/embed] The second one, just up, tackles quantum field theory and the Pauli exclusion principle, of which we've been recently speaking. (Admittedly it's two minutes long, but these are big topics!) [embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxeb3Pc4PA4[/embed] The world is made of fields, which appear to us as particles when we look at them. Something everyone should know.