From Spinning Tops to Spinning Protons

Zhongbo Kang Professor / UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy

Have you ever spun a top and watched it whirl? Now imagine something far smaller—a proton, one of the building blocks of every atom. A proton also has “spin,” but here is the surprise: we still do not fully understand where that spin comes from. Inside every proton is a busy world of quarks and gluons, constantly moving and interacting. How do all of them combine to make the proton spin? In this talk, we’ll shrink down from a spinning top to the inside of a proton, explore one of the great puzzles of modern physics, and meet the future Electron-Ion Collider—a giant new microscope being built to reveal the hidden world inside protons.

Recommended grade range: 6th-8th