The strong interaction: Confinement of particles in Mesons

Interactions are an important concept in all sciences but they also play an important role in our everyday life. The interactive science exhibition Wirkungswechsel, initiated by the Austrian ScienceCenter-Network, wants to engage people in interactions and help them understand. The exhibit Starke Paare (Strong Pairs), which was developed within this project, enables visitors to experience the so-called Strong Interaction. Together with two other exhibits they represent three of the four fundamental interactions known today. The solid and powerful electro-mechanical construction of the exhibit enables visitors to experience the strong force as its name suggests. A significant force is necessary to move the levers and consequently separate the two quarks within the meson. The effort necessary to interact with the exhibit should encourage visitors to take up the challenge and spark interest to investigate further. The animation shown on the screen is subdivided into different phases, which are accompanied by explanation on what is happing in the physical process that is displayed. This should stimulate the visitors curiosity to explore all phases by pulling the levers apart and holding it at specific positions. This playful approach facilitates the understanding of an abstract and complicated physical phenomenon in a way that is well suited for a hands-on science exhibition. Furthermore, the touch screen of the exhibit provides access to more in- depth information on particle physics as well. An important aspect during the development of the exhibit was the ability to update and extend the information offered on the screen. First optimisations of the animations and information shown on the screen were easily accomplished by the project members without the need to involve the original manufacturer in a lengthy and tiresome process. We envisage to further optimise and add features to the exhibit in order to extend its lifetime and its usefulness. It could even be contemplated to have additional copies built by Hüttinger and have them focus on different aspects. Furthermore, the idea to port the application running on the exhibit to a standard low-cost PC has been discussed and successfully demonstrated.