Question
Glashow, Salam, and Weinberg won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for unifying this fundamental force with electromagnetism. For 10 points each:
[10e] Name this fundamental force responsible for beta decay. A 1956 paper by Lee and Yang suggested that this force can violate parity symmetry, which was later experimentally confirmed.
ANSWER: weak nuclear force [or weak interaction; accept electroweak theory]
[10m] This female Chinese-American physicist verified Lee and Yang’s proposal later in 1956 by observing parity violation in the beta decay of cobalt-60 atoms.
ANSWER: Chien-Shiung Wu [or Wu Chien-Shiung or Wú Jiànxióng]
[10h] Wu’s experiment resolved this problem in which the decay modes of two particles with the same properties violated parity symmetry. Lee and Yang’s paper proposed that the two particles in this problem are the same kaon.
ANSWER: tau–theta puzzle
<Physics>
Summary
| 2023 ACF Winter @ Columbia | 11/11/2023 | Y | 8 | 16.25 | 88% | 63% | 13% |
Data
| Columbia A | Vassar | 10 | 10 | 0 | 20 |
| Cornell C | Rutgers B | 10 | 10 | 0 | 20 |
| NYU A | NYU B | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Penn A | Penn B | 10 | 10 | 0 | 20 |
| Columbia B | Princeton A | 10 | 10 | 10 | 30 |
| Bard A | Rowan A | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Princeton B | Yale A | 10 | 10 | 0 | 20 |
| Haverford | Yale C | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |