Origins of Mass: Mostly Energy
When one gets deep into a discussion of "what is stuff made of?" with a non-scientist most people[1] can roughly describe the inside of an atom as protons, neutrons and electrons. A few can describe the inner workings of nucleons in terms of quarks but beyond that there is very little popular explanation for how things work on the quark level.
Fermilab's daily publication has a great explanation that goes a little deeper into the making of nucleons in the context of where the mass of an atom comes from (hint: it's mostly not the Higgs).
1 people in this case are those who would be interested in explaining the inside of stuff to other people.
[ http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive_2012/today12-01-13_NutshellMassReadMore.html ]
Published on January 16, 2012 at 5:04PM.
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