Almost as if to prove Charles Murray wrong...
Dr. Patricia Schwarz has thrown together a webpage about string theory. While Dr. Schwarz can handleadvanced mathematics, I cannot. So she was nice enough to put together her webpage for dummies like me. The answers to questions like "What is theoretical physics?" and "So what is string theory, then?" come in 2 flavors, basic and advanced. Here's part of the basic definition of string theory:
Think of a guitar string that has been tuned by stretching the string under tension across the guitar. Depending on how the string is plucked and how much tension is in the string, different musical notes will be created by the string. These musical notes could be said to be excitation modes of that guitar string under tension.
. In a similar manner, in string theory, the elementary particles we observe in particle accelerators could be thought of as the "musical notes" or excitation modes of elementary strings.
Ya know, I always thought I was an expert in excitation modes. Must ask The Dulcinea for her opinon on this.
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