Question Video: Arranging Subatomic Particles according to Their Masses | Nagwa Question Video: Arranging Subatomic Particles according to Their Masses | Nagwa

Question Video: Arranging Subatomic Particles according to Their Masses Physics

List the following particles in order from the least mass to the greatest mass: tauon, photon, proton, electron, muon, neutron.

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Video Transcript

List the following particles in order from the least mass to the greatest mass: tauon, photon, proton, electron, muon, neutron.

We’ll be ranking our six particles from least mass to greatest mass. Of the six particles listed, we know that a photon is considered to be massless. Therefore, it would have the least mass out of everything. And so we can place it at the top of our list. When we compare the masses of our three charged leptons, the tauon, the electron, and the muon, the electron has the least mass and the tauon has the greatest with the muon being in the middle. In fact, the mass of the electron is so small that it comes next on our list. And the muon being 200 times greater than the electron is the third on our list, which leaves us with the three most massive particles on our list, the tauon, the proton, and the neutron.

Their masses are actually pretty close together. With the neutron slightly edging out the mass of a proton, we can put our next particle in our list. The proton is the next most massive particle. The proton is followed pretty closely by the neutron, leaving only the tauon which happens to be about twice as massive as the neutron. When ranking the particles on our list from least mass to greatest mass, it goes photon, electron, muon, proton, neutron, tauon.

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