Alright!  Now we get to discuss neutrinos without me having to worry about being reduced to my component parts.  And while I think my component parts are lovely, I’m sure you would rather not go there.

Neutrinos are interesting little guys, meaning literally “neutral elementary particle”.  An elementary particle is simply something which is not known to have smaller parts.  We used to believe atoms were the smallest possible units of mass.  Now we know, of course, that “atoms” are whopping HUGE units of mass.

No, it's not "cute" - This was the first ever hydrogen bubble chamber to detect neutrinos

When we start talking about “elementary particles”, you’re really talking about particle physics.  You quickly get into leptons, bosons, positrons, muons, tau neutrinos, and lots of other really cool words you swore in freshman algebra you’d never use.

Guess again.

Particle physics is also where String Theory comes in, but we aren’t playing around in THAT sandbox today.

Okay… here’s the very basics.  You can accept that everything is composed of small parts, right?  I mean, c’mon guys.  You swallowed atomic theory without gagging, right?  You’re just going to have to realize that an atom is the apple, and it can be sliced and diced into all kinds of little parts and pieces.  Some of these parts have a positive charge, some a negative charge, and some are neutral.  Still with me?

You just never realized how very many pieces and parts atoms could be sliced into.

Really, you’re more than half-way there.  You have the concept of atoms down, right?  You have the whole negative/positive/neutral thing going, right?

We’ll leave string theory for another day.